One of the initial experiences I use after
introducing quarter note and eighth notes in 1st grade involves
notating language. I present a single word in isolation, ask the students to
clap along with the rhythm (syllables), question them about how many times they
clapped, and then ask them to identify what rhythm symbol we would use to
represent that word.
Since it’s getting close
to Halloween, I put several Halloween themed cut-outs around my room. Next to each
one is a card with its name. As a group, the students had to find the pictures,
clap the words, and identify the notation. The students could then lift the
card to reveal the answer.
So for example, up by my
desk were a witch and a spider:
After the students identified the spider as
two sounds, or eighth notes, a student lifted the card to show the answer to
the class:
Towards the end of the
activity, we made our way to the back of the room where we discovered a
challenge: Frankenstein!
The students clapped his
name and determined there were three sounds. “But we don’t know any notes with
three sounds. How can we show this using our notes”? Without fail, each of my
classes discovered on their own how to use combinations of the notes we know to
represent words with more than two sounds.
I also use this time to
question the students about the order of the combinations (i.e. should
Frankenstein be quarter-2 eighths, or should it be 2 eighths-quarter). I often
have a student that is able to demonstrate how this changes the way the word
sounds without me modeling it first.
In a future class, we’ll
revisit this activity by having the students compose their own Spooky Rhythms. Students
will draw a picture of a Halloween monster or object and write the notation for
it underneath. As a class, we can use their individual words to create phrases
which can then be transferred to instruments. I particularly love setting the
xylophones up with La, Ti, Do, Mi & Fa to give it a spooky minor sound.
-Audrie
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