Plum Rose Publishing Music Education Learning Center |
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 Developing an ear for music is an essential component of music mastery. It enables musicians to create music spontaneously, create melodic and harmonic lines that fit into the music, adjust intonation, transcribe a favorite tune, or even write down their own music composition. With the rise of YouTube, I see trends in music classes where students no longer feel like it’s necessary to read music at all. They would rather watch a video tutorial. And even lower than that on their priority list is ear training. For music teachers to successfully draw a connection from ear training to music making in the real world it takes a little finesse in lesson planning. This can be a daunting task for most of us. Showing modern students the relevance of solfège is an undertaking of its own. Here are some fun activities that may help you incorporate ear training in your elementary music classes.
There are many fun ways to incorporate ear training in your elementary music classes. Have fun and get creative. Let me know what works for you in the comments below.
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 Teaching about repeated notes, steps, skips, and leaps is fundamental to students learning to read music notation. The better they can recognize repeated notes, steps, skips, and leaps, the easier it will be to sightread music later and to understand the basics of melodic composition. Here are some of my favorite ways to teach about repeated notes, steps, skips, and leaps.
How to Teach About Repeated notes, Steps, Skips, and Leaps 1. Visual Aids: Using visual aids is a great way to teach about the intervals. I like to play a game using five strands of yarn that represent the five lines of the music staff. I make the strings long enough for the entire class to line up in front of the huge staff. This could be done outside, unless you have a large music room. Then I proceed to shout out "step," "skip," or "leap" in any order along with the direction forward or backward. If the students step correctly, they get to stay in the game. If they don't, they have to sit out. Other easy ways for students to visualize the intervals are to do worksheets where students identify repeated notes, steps, skips, and leaps. To go into greater detail about intervals, you can use "Learn Music Through Coloring: Mammals: Music Theory" book, which teaches about intervals and other music theory concepts. There are also videos on Youtube that can help students practice indentifying these intervals. 2. Ear Training: Incorporating ear training into your music lesson makes it easier to learn songs, develop their musical ear, and teach certain topics in music like repeated notes, steps, skips, and leaps. Using Curwin hand signs adds a visual element for students. Sing an interval and then let students guess if you sang a repeated note, step, skip, or leap. Play a game like Poison Rhythm, but using intervals. (Poison Rhythm is when you choose a rhythm that the class cannot repeat. Then you proceed to clap different rhythms. Just like the Simon Says game, if you clap the poison rhythm and the students clap it too, they are out of the game. The last one standing is the winner.) Pick step, skip, leap, or repeated note and let that be the poison interval. Play the game using solfege (do-re-mi...) 4. Contextual Listening: Listen to music as a class and then analyze a portion of the melody. You can ask general questions like "How would you describe the melody? Were there a lot of leaps or steps?" You can also print out a portion of the sheet music and let students circle the skips or draw a line between the steps. 5. Compositional Exercises: Give students an opportunity to write their own composition using repeated notes, steps, skips, and leaps. Set clear guidelines for students to compose to. Specify the number of steps for instance. Conclusion Learning about repeated notes, steps, skips, and leaps helps students more easily read music notation, understand the basics of melodic composition, and even be a jumping off point for improvisation at more advanced levels. Teaching repeated notes, steps, skips, and leaps can be really fun. Get creative with the many possibilities drawing from all the resources in your classroom. You can use these ideas as a starting point and let me know in the comments what other activities your students love.  A "Melody" is a series of pitches and rhythms that our brain recognizes as one unit. Melodies often have the tendency to get higher at more emotional points and lower at points of reflection and rest. Sometimes melodies with lyrics follow our normal speech inflection. Melodies can step, stay the same, or leap. Melodies can repeat certain rhythmic and interval patterns. A catchy melody is one that gets stuck in your head . A good way to offer a simple definition of melody is simply to say, "melody is the part of the song we can sing." Here are some fun activities that teach melody to young students in preschool and elementary music.
There are many fun music activities you can do to teach melody to your elementary and preschool students. I hope this gives you a good starting point and inspires you to think of many other things to do with your class. Leave a comment below and tell us what activities you've used in your classroom.  When I first started teaching music, my students eyes used to glaze over as soon as I said certain key words like "quarter note" or "tempo". I realized this could be a big problem. How could I teach music without teaching music theory? As a music teacher, I wanted to instill in my students the fundamentals of music which I loved that could help them become better musicians and develop an overall appreciation for music. This article will give you some tips I've discovered over the years to teach music theory and tell you what worked for me for each grade level.  How to Teach Music Theory to Preschool Students?I love associating new vocabulary words with rhythms using ta and ti-ti for preschoolers. They love looking at the pictures and shouting out the words. When preschoolers don't know a word, it's a great teaching moment for you. They pick up the rhythms just as easily as they learn new vocabulary. At this stage of a child's development, language development is very high. Why not naturally start embedding these ideas of rhythm in their minds? You can also teach them music dynamic, music instrument families, and all sorts of other things using the PowerPoints. I've made some of my PowerPoints downloadable for you to use in your own class. (Music Powerpoints Link)  Teaching Kindergarten Through 2nd Graders Music TheoryKindergarten through second graders are very active. They love to learn through doing. That's why performing a rhythm using body percussion, ORFF instruments, or rhythm clap alongs are all excellent choices. I still may use the PowerPoints for early grades, but eventually fade them out. I like to do music centers and let students mold the notes and rests out of clay. There are a lot of music theory games which you can read about in my article Rhythm Music Center Activities for Elementary Students. Keep explanations to students at this age brief and do activities that help them internalize the theory concepts you are teaching. You can start to give them ear training activities, but keep the activities to about five minutes. One ear training activity is to use those toy bells you have laying around your classroom to have students take turns picking the bell that you sang using solfege. For instance, if you sing "Do-Re-Mi," they would raise their hand and pick the C, D, and E bells.  Music Theory Activities for 3rd through 5th GradersThird through fifth graders are social and start to look at the world a little differently. They may not find bouncing around as fun as they use to. That's why I love teaching music theory with my color-by-note music workbooks. You can do one page per week. The activity takes about ten minutes and you can turn on some nice music by a composer you are teaching them or their favorite concert song while they are coloring. I also like to teach music theory while I'm teaching them their concert repertoire. Take the musical ideas that go along with the song and use them as a lesson. What was the shape of the melody they sang? Was the ending piano or forte? Who can write the rhythm of the line they just sang on the board? These are all questions that will get students thinking about the music as they are making music. It also tightens up the performance.  Teaching Theory to Upper School (Middle and High School Students)Teaching music theory within a song is a technique that should carry over into even adult music students. Upper school music students want to know that what they are learning is relevant, so teaching music theory separately may get some backlash from a few outspoken middle school students. But their are still fun ways to teach music theory as a lesson in itself. Music games like "Poison Rhythm" where students can't clap a certain rhythm or they are out, are still really fun for upper school music classes. Use sixteenth note and rest combinations or syncopated rhythms to bring it up to their level. Students at this age like music worksheets. They seem older, but music class is their specials class and they still want to have fun. You can play a music theory game or do a music Quizlet. Then reward them with a teen themed water bottle sticker.
I hope these suggestions help you teach music theory in your class. Have fun teaching music!  There they are. Twenty-five students all lined up and staring wide-eyed at you. You know you need to warm them up, but are afraid this will be the "boring" part of the lesson. Don't give up on warm ups yet! Here are five elementary music choir warm ups kids love. I've compiled and tested these myself.
1. SSS Contest Have students stand up and then direct them to all take a deep breath at the same time and let it out on the sound "ss." When each student finishes their breath, direct them to sit down. The last student standing is the winner. (You can give them a prize/sticker if you'd like.) Tip: If you think someone has cheated, pick a few classmates to be judges and watch the others.  Channel summer excitement and keep students engaged at home with these summer-themed music coloring pages!
Click the link below to access the coloring pages. This is a fun review of music notes, rests, dynamic, and other music terms for your students. This package includes ten simple Summer themed music review color by music pages for elementary students to do at home, private lesson, or in the classroom. This review covers: Notes, Rests, Dynamic, staff, and clefs and includes an answer key! This product is great for little musicians to use at home during school closure or summer holidays. Easily use these coloring pages for distance learning by sending .pdfs and instructions for your students or their parents. Answer keys are provided for parents or a sub to check and assist kids when they are having trouble. Get your summer review pages here. *All pages may be colored with a 24 crayon set or 8 basic colors plus pink. ************************************************************* You might also like: Learn Music Through Coloring Birds: Notes, Rests, and Meter Music Conducting Quiz Time Signature Coloring Page 2/4 3/4 and 4/4 If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. I am happy to help! My Website Follow me on Pinterest Send a message on Facebook __________________________________________________ #distancelearning #MusicatHome #Music #distancelearningTPT #privatelessons #sublessons |
Angela BondMusic Teacher/ Musician/ Owner of Plum Rose Publishing Categories |