Mission Possible! Actionable Ideas for Active Music Making in the Elementary Music Classroom

The list was long. I had a column for rhythmic, a column for melodic, and a column for all the other things that didn’t fit into the previous two. It was daunting. I had not yet learned to develop my own style of teaching, I hadn’t yet embarked on the wonderful world of levels trainings and summer workshops, and I was just working on getting through my list of stuff.

Music making? Joy? That was mission impossible.

Nope, I had too many things to teach, and not enough time to do it, and I needed to check off all the things in all the columns and collect all the data to show all the learning and progress and growth and… UGH. Do you ever feel this way? Do you ever feeling like you’re spinning, and covering, and never really taking the opportunity to get past the nuts and bolts of what you need to cover to just allow your kids to make music?

Well you’re in luck, because the month of April here on the ol’ blog is just for you.

This past week on TAP, I published an episode entitled “What is Active Music Making.” It’s a term I hear tossed around here or there in the elementary music space, particularly when talking about different pedagogical approaches such as Kodály, Orff-Schulwerk, Dalcroze Eurhythmics, or Gordon Music Learning Theory. But my interpretation of active music making isn’t tied to any one approach, nor is it a specific destination in and of itself. Rather, it is a series of possible paths, possible voyages if you will, that you can travel with your kids to bring your kids closer to status as musicianship explorer.

Okay, is the mission/voyage/explorer analogy or metaphor or storyline too much now?

If you’ve listened to the podcast episode, I dove into what active music making is, how I define it, why we should use it, and I briefly touch on what it looks like in the classroom. In this blog series, I’m going to get much more specific, with actual lesson ideas and concrete ways you can implement different modes and media into your teaching and, more importantly, your students’ learning pathways in the elementary music room. But first, let’s outline those things really quickly for anyone who’s new to the party.

What is Active Music Making?

It’s exactly what it sounds like. Kids, actively. making. music. Think beyond the sitting and singing. Think beyond the worksheets and the symbols and the definitions. I’m not implying that a music classroom should be absent of either of those things, actually quite the contrary. Singing is a fundamental part of our identity as music makers, and literacy components (i.e. symbols and definitions) are essential elements we need to teach our children in order to teach music like a language.

But we also need to teach them to be fluent in that language.

Sure, we prepare and present concepts so that your elementary music students can see, hear, and feel how a rhythm or melody is sung, but active music making takes them beyond that. Active music making takes your kids beyond the literacy component and into a space where they can explore, discover, and create as participants in musical experiences.

What does Active Music Making look like?

… or sound like, or feel like? Imagine kids taking knowledge of reading and writing rhythms and applying it to create their own music. Or a group of students choreographing a beautiful movement piece to highlight the form of a piece of music they have analyzed. Or taking a series of speech chains and turning them into an unpitched percussion piece, where the whole class participates.

Over the course of the next four weeks, I’m going to take you through four concrete examples of how I interpret active music making within the context of my classroom. This series is all about giving you not only motivation, but tools and concrete steps to begin slowly releasing control and giving your students more agency in the elementary music classroom. Here’s a peek at what’s coming:

Get ready to activate your music classroom and stop simply covering concepts. We’re about to level up, friends!


Worried you’ll forget to hop on over here throughout this series? You wouldn’t want to miss anything, would you? Well don’t fret my pet (name that tv show!) I’ve got you covered! Sign up below, and you’ll be sure to be the first to know when new things are happening over here on the blog!!

A Composition Sequence for the Elementary Music Classroom

There is no better way to find out how your students have truly processed information than by asking them to create something with it. By asking students to create with rhythmic and melodic concepts, you can take a teeny tiny peek inside their brains, and make a call on whether or not they own the process or need to take another lap. One of the most effective ways to assess is to provide opportunities for melodic composition. But what does that look like in the elementary music classroom?

Improvisation & Composition.

Two big, long, scary words.  Admit it, do these two little words wrapt their arms around you like a great big hug, or sneak attack like a ninja? If you’re anything like I am, it’s the second. Or at least I used to feel that way. But guess what, y’all. I’ve figured out a super simple way to get your kids to leave the station and get to their destination on time when it comes to the creativity train. Success with these two tricksters has everything to do with sequencing.

I’m sure you’re shocked to hear the “s” word from me. But all joking and sarcasm aside, isn’t sequencing and appropriate scaffolds the key to #allthethings?

Improvisation and composition are no different. As a matter of fact, in my music classroom, improvisation is a scaffold to composition; they exist on a continuum. Improvisation really functions as brainstorming or playing with information to see what feels and sounds good. Improvisation is spontaneously inspired. Composition is where we formalize the play and make decisions about what felt and sounded the best. You could say that composition comes from being inspired to do the same thing more than once, and then writing it down and sharing it.

Curious to know more? Here are the steps I use in my music classroom to facilitate melodic composition, through exploration and improvisation.

Step 1: Start With a Familiar Folk Song

Just like any other concept you would practice in the music room, start with a song & game! Choose one of your favs that has an extractable pattern for whatever concept you’re about to practice, that your kiddos can notate.

For example, the song “Apple Tree” is perfect for manipulating quarter note and two eighth notes. There are about a million others, but for this post, I’m going to go ahead and stick with one of my favs. The only rhythms in the entire song are quarter notes and two eighth notes. Also, the opening line uses the text “Apple Tree,” which is the perfect extractable pattern for the next step!

Click here to get these manipulatives!

Step 2: Improvise Speech Patterns

A simple way to get kids moving and grooving with improvisation is through speech. It’s a much more accessible entry point compared with formal notation or rhythm syllables, and jumping right into improvising rhythms with melody right off the bat is like skipping from the first floor to the thirteenth—bad news bears.

“Apple Tree” has the perfect two words built right into the song for quarter notes and eighth notes. But say you wanted to add another rhythm that students could improvise with. What other words go with “apple” and “pie”? How about cinnamon? Just remember, if you are planning on taking this sequence all the way to the composition phase, make sure students will be able to derive whatever text you choose to make word chains with. For example, my second graders probably wouldn’t use “cinnamon” because I don’t teach eighth and sixteenth note combinations until later on in third grade.

Step 3: Set Rhythmic Content

Rhythms provide framework for melodic content. Unless you are embarking on the wonderful world of melodic composition in free time (which I don’t recommend with elementary students), it’s essential to create rhythmic (or speech) parameters before turning to melodic improvisation. Have students use manipulatives or pencil and paper to establish which speech pattern they liked well enough to do twice and then write down. To move even further along the composition continuum, have students write down their most favorite rhythm patterns in formal notation. Once they have made these rhythmic decisions, it’s time to move on to the melody!

(*NOTE: This doesn’t necessarily mean the rhythms are completely set and unchangeable, but the following steps are more accessible for students if they have a rhythm or speech pattern with which to manipulate melodically.)

Click here to get these dictation staffs!!

Step 4: Improvise within Tonal Parameters

Creating melodies is a much different process than improvising rhythmic patterns. With my younger students, we spend lots of time moving manipulatives up and down on staff lines and singing what they would sound like to make melodic decisions.

With older students, who likely know the complete pentatone (do re mi so la), I like to give them the opportunity to play on barred instruments. If they have their speech patterns, and the instruments are set up in a pentatonic scale, they are usually good to go. I often tell students they can find the notes they like that go along with their speech pattern, as long as the final note is the home note “do.”

I usually provide them some visual aids to make sure this happens, which lucky for you are in the resource library! Click here to get them!!

Step 5: Compose the Melody

After students have found the melodic combinations they like best (and after I’ve reiterated that repeated patterns and elemental forms, i.e. ABAB are their friends), I ask them to commit to their favorite patterns. This means that they like it and can remember it well enough to play several times in a row. If they take away the speech patterns used to create the melody, and decide they want to change the rhythm, that’s a-ok—just as long as they can still notate it.

Step 6: Write It Down and Share It!

Once students have finished their compositions, give them the opportunity to both perform for their peers, but also have students perform each other’s compositions. This is such an invaluable process for all of the students. Yes, a musical composition is much like a journal—it is very personal and students should feel ownership over what they have created. However, it is also important to remind our kids that music is really truly meant to be shared!


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Resource Roundup: 5 Books to Reinforce Tonal Center in the Elementary Music Classroom

In my classroom, I’m a little bit of a control freak when it comes to laying solid foundations and setting appropriate scaffolds for concepts. In Kindergarten, it’s steady beat, steady beat, STEADY BEAT! Being able to identify and maintain a steady heartbeat sets the stage for understanding rhythmic concepts in relation to time and duration. It’s something that we have to reinforce and revisit throughout all rhythmic learning, because without a firm understanding and ownership of steady beat, our kids would be a hot mess express when it comes to rhythm.

The same goes for melodic elements. Identifying and creating patterns with high and low sets the stage for kids to understand tonal relationships, steps and skips, and how to read, write, and create melodies. Within the pentatonic, and later when we move to more functional harmony, tonal center becomes another important foundational concept. Whether you call it the home note, resting tone, or something else (I choose tonal center!), creating an aural image early on is essential.

My most favorite way to emphasize tonal center in folk songs is through “singing a story.” It’s no secret that I use books frequently in my classroom, and these 5 resources are perfect for any of your classes, from Kindergarten and beyond.

(This post contains amazon affiliate links.)

1. There were Ten in the Bed illustrated by Annie Kubler

Okay, there might be a million different variations of this book out there, but this is my absolute favorite. This particular version has a dial that you turn as each child falls out of the bed. My kindergarten and first graders go crazy for it! After my first graders learn do, I have them sing so-mi-do with hand signs instead of “roll over.” This song is perfect for practicing do.

2. Over in the Meadow by John Langstaff, Illustrated by Feodor Rojankovsky

I absolutely love this book. It’s always the first one I pull out to read to Kindergarten at the beginning of the year for 2 reasons: (1) the melody is absolutely beautiful (I sing it more like a lullaby); and (2) it is a beautiful rhyming book with numbers. The kiddos love to pick up on both of these predictable features, and TA-DA—they automatically sing the home tone when filling in the blank for each number. I usually slow down at the end of each phrase and let them round things out with the rhyming number/resting tone.

3. I Know a Shy Fellow Who Swallowed a Cello by Barbara Gabriel and John O’Brien

This variant on “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly,” is a super fun way to review instruments or introduce the orchestra to your older students. The cadence text is “perhaps he’ll bellow” and is always the students’ part in my classroom. The repetition of the final cadence so-la-ti-do is a great opportunity to emphasize tonal center, and also extend into functional harmony and cadence with your older students!

4. Cat Goes Fiddle-I-Fee by Paul Galdone

If there was ever a book for vocal exploration using animal sounds, this is the one! There are so many fun variants of this folk song, and some really accessible choral arrangements out there, that it is more than worth it to introduce your students to this folk song early on. The cadence point in this song is mi-re-do and is perfect for your second graders when they round out the pentatone.

5. I See the Moon by Joan Hutson

This is another great rhyming book, with absolutely beautiful pictures. There are a couple of beautiful melodies out there, and no matter which you choose, the words and rhyming scheme are repetitive enough that even your youngest kiddos can catch on.

Using books in the classroom is truly an awesome way to incorporate new songs, themes, and even introduce curricular concepts to your students. I hope that a couple of these books inspires you to reinforce tonal center with your students, using those rhyming words and repetitive cadence points to your advantage!

 

Music Teacher Inspiration for the New Year

Welp, party people, it’s officially a new year. And as with any new year, there’s about a million and one resolutions floating around. I’ll run a marathon. I’ll start to purge some things and become more minimalist. I’ll read 100 books. I’ll do all the things. (Note: These are resolutions that I’ve heard here or there, not necessarily my own. Except that book reading thing. I need to do waaaaay more of that.) But as I was reflecting on 2017, I realized that it was seriously different than any other. And it made me reconsider the same old, same old resolutions.

Last year was the biggest year of my life, pun somewhat intended. I was either pregnant or a new mom the whole year–which is no joke. Becoming a parent was the most wonderfully terrifying experience of my entire life. I remember sitting in the labor and delivery ward at the hospital, hours away from delivering our baby girl, staring at my husband and thinking omg we’re going to have a baby. I mean, that’s sort of what the whole pregnancy thing is about, I realize.

But it didn’t become real to me until she was literally crying on my chest.

Those first few weeks were a blur. Between the typical new mom struggles (that no one really talks about) and the lack of sleep, I was a hot mess express. Everyone talks all about the labor and delivery, but I felt blindsided by the first few days of motherhood. It was beautiful and rewarding, and all of the amazing things, truly. But I was completely overwhelmed and swimming trying to find myself within this brand new identity.

Y’all it was hard. I struggled. I still struggle.

Becoming a mom is the hardest and the best thing I’ve ever done. Anyone who’s a parent will say those exact words–at least in my experience! The other thing they say, as frustratingly true as it is, is that there’s no way to understand it until you’ve actually done it.

I think most things in life worth doing are this way. You never know how strong you can feel on mile 8 until you build up to mile 7. You never know how free you can feel when you have the hard conversations  with those that you love.

And you never know how much you can get out of teaching until you put as much as you can into teaching.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is not a guilt trip about what you are or are not doing. I’m not about to tell you to spend more hours at the school. You don’t need to spend more money on resources that are going to sit on your shelf unopened. And you don’t have to have each and every word you’re about to say in each lesson scripted, with every “i” dotted and “t” crossed. It’s all about mindset. And for me, it’s three little words.

Purposeful. Sequential. Joyful.

Now if you’ve looked around here at all, you’ll notice that these three words come after Anacrusic throughout this website. There’s a reason these three words are the core of my teaching practice. They provide the clarity I need to set my intentions every morning before school. They define my goals for each day, each lesson, and each interaction with my students. They are simple, but heavy.

I want to be purposeful with each and every moment I have with my students. They are often few and far between, or even fleeting. I might be the only music teacher they ever have, the only voice they ever hear sing, or the only person who lifts them up that day. I want everything to be sequenced beautifully. I want my kids to be fully immersed in each and every musical experience, by doing music. There’s clear intention, but it unfolds organically from lesson to lesson. But most importantly…

I want each and every student, each person, that I make music with to feel the inherent joy that made me want to make music my life’s work.

There’s a reason that I became a music teacher. And it’s not so that I could teach 2nd graders to identify a half note. I mean, that’s a great literacy goal, but that is absolutely not why I get up in the morning. Once I reconnected with the real reason, joy, I never dreaded getting up another day. I never had to force myself out the door. I still needed my morning coffee, but I drink it with a smile.

So this year, I challenge you to stop spending hours and hours pouring over what to do next, or how to fill time. Don’t allow yourself to get bogged down with #allthethings. Give yourself the grace you need to be the inspired musician you are and the joyful music teacher your kids deserve.

Find the purpose, be thoughtful with the sequence, and choose joy.

My Favorite December Books for the Elementary Music Classroom

Today I’m sharing with you my absolute faaaaavorite books to sing in the elementary music classroom in December. Although a few are holiday themed, there are certainly a couple that you can use if you don’t feel comfortable or aren’t permitted to do holiday themed activities at your campus… so really the title says five, but there are a TON more than that in this post!! #ninjaskills

Without further ado, here are my five favorite books to sing to my elementary music students in December!

(*Disclaimer: the amazon links in this post are affiliate links! Can y’all say 2-day shipping?!)

1. Ten on the Sled written by Kim Norman & illustrated by Liza Woodruff (by the same author/illustrator & winter themed: She’ll be Coming Up the MountainIf It’s Snowy and You Know It, Clap Your Paws!)

If you use “Ten in the Bed” with your kids (  so-mido practice song, anyone?) then this is a super fun extension that my kids go absolutely nuts over. It’s all about a caribou who has all of his friends on the sled. They “exit” the sled a lot of different ways, and there are lots of different animals, providing about a million different things to chat about outside of the rhyming words and alliteration.

2. There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell written by Lucille Colandro & illustrated by Jared D. Lee (similar: There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow)

This is truly one of my very favorite series of books. There are about a million (okay, not that many, but a lot) for every season and every holiday. This one is perfect for the holidays and for audiating do at the end of each verse. I also love to give my kiddos bells to ring as we sing the story.

3. The Littlest Reindeer by Nicola Killen

This story I use shamelessly when I want to do a Reindeer themed lesson. (Reindeer Vocal Explorations and Reindeer Games Melody Practice are peeeeerfect if you want to play along!) There are a couple of reoccurring sounds that are perfect for un-pitched percussion integration, similarly to how I use The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. (I talk about it in this post!)

4. Hush Little Polar Bear by Jeff Mack

I looove to talk about lullabies with my Kindergarten kiddos, especially when we talk about loud/quiet & fast/slow comparatives. This is a really fun variation on “Hush Little Baby,” and takes the reader on a trip through the narrator’s dreams. The kids always pick up on (and go nuts over) the fact that the story book cover in the book is the same as the cover of the actual book. So meta, right?

5. Jingle Bells by Iza Trapani

Iza Trapani books are seriously pure gold. I think I own every single book by this author, and I always snatch them up when I see one I think I might not have! (As a matter of fact… I might have accidentally bought doubles of a few!!) I just about lost it when I found this one–it’s so good y’all! I love all of the different verses and the warm themes throughout the book. And the illustrations are to die for. Not to mention that your kiddos will love singing the chorus 800 million times–pass out some bells to make it a real party!!


That about wraps up this round up for December books! If you love round ups like this and want to be the first to find out about them, sign up for my newsletter below!

Reindeer Vocal Explorations in SeeSaw

This is the shortest and sweetest little blog post I’ve probably ever written… because the video below is going to tell you eeeevvvveerrrrthing you need to know about the latest and greatest resource in the FREE Resource Library: Reindeer Vocal Exploration Templates for Seesaw!

This digital resource is the first venture as to what I hope will be many digital components to resources, something many of you have been asking for! Check out the video below, download the templates, give it a try, and let me know how it goes!!

If you’re interested this whole set (pre-made pathways, blank presentations, and worksheets), click here to get it in the Anacrusic store!