Music

Brewer Elementary

Long – Addie Newcomer

Learning Objective/Exit Outcomes: 

• Students will be able to pair different sounds and beats of body percussion with sight words. 
• Students will be able to discuss the types of sounds that can be made with body percussion.
• Students will be able to match a beat with the contraction sight words they are memorizing. 
• Students will be able to make a rhythm and body percussion beat as a class.
• Students will be able to speak their contraction sight words with the beat. 

Integration Area/Subject:

ELA & Music

State Standards:

ELAGSE5RF4: Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

ELAGSE2L2: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

1. Use an apostrophe to form contractions and frequently occurring possessives.

ESGM5.CR.1 Improvise melodies, variations, and accompaniments. Improvise rhythmic phrases.

ESGM5.CR.2 Compose and arrange music within specified guidelines.

1. Create rhythmic and melodic motives to enhance literature.
2. Arrange rhythmic patterns to create simple forms, instrumentation, and various styles.

ESGM5.PR.2 Perform a varied repertoire of music on instruments, alone and with others.

1. Perform rhythmic patterns with body percussion and a variety of instruments using appropriate technique.
2. Perform body percussion and instrumental parts, including ostinatos, while other students play or sing contrasting parts.

Materials/Playing Space: 

Students can stay by their desks for this activity

Description: 

The PAIR Specialist introduced body percussion, telling students all the instruments needed for the lesson were already in the room. After a few suggestions of where these instruments were hiding, students figured out the instruments in the class were our bodies. Students learned to use claps, laps (hands to thighs), snaps, and stomps as four instruments we would use during the lesson.

The teacher provided a set of sight words the students have been working on. Since they mostly consisted of contractions, the students discussed what contractions sounded like and how they compared with specific beats of body percussion. They decided their body percussion rhythm should be sharp, quick, and staccato.  The class divided into parts, some performing a beat by slapping the tables, some using pencils to make a tapping sound, some using their voices to ad lib, and the rest used a call and response vocal beat to review all the contraction site words. 

Notes:

The strategy was successful in many ways, but the greatest success lies in having the students connect types of sounds and the characteristics of certain beats with the characteristics of the sight words themselves. It would be interesting to see how the same class could take a separate set of sight words (longer words with more syllables, words with softer syllables or softer sounds) and create a beat that is the opposite of the sharp, staccato beat of contractions.  This class could definitely do that! Their enthusiasm was evident.

Brewer Elementary

Boddie-Baker/Walls – Jen Weisphal

Learning Objective/Exit Outcomes: 

• Students will read a poem aloud, deriving a tempo naturally found in the words.
• Students will create rhythm using body percussion.
• Students will create rhythms to pair with poetry.
• Students will use the words in a poem that influence the body percussion choices to enhance the poem being read aloud.
• Students will work together to create body percussion to go with a poem.

Integration Area/Subject:

ELA & Music

State Standards:

ELAGSE5RF4 Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

1. Read on-level text with purpose and understanding.
2. Read on-level prose and poetry orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings.
3. Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.

ELAGSE5L3 Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening.

1. Expand, combine, and reduce sentences for meaning, reader/listener interest, and style.*
2. Compare and contrast the varieties of English (e.g., dialects, registers) used in stories, dramas, or poems.

ESGM5.CR.2 Compose and arrange music within specified guidelines.

1. Create rhythmic and melodic motives to enhance literature.
2. Compose music (with or without text) within an octave scale in simple meter (e.g. quarter notes, quarter rests, barred eighth notes, half notes, half rests, dotted half notes, barred sixteenth notes, whole notes, whole rests, dotted quarter notes, single eighth notes, eighth rests, triplets).
3. Arrange rhythmic patterns to create simple forms, instrumentation, and various styles. 

ESGM5.PR.2 Perform a varied repertoire of music on instruments, alone and with others.

1. Perform rhythmic patterns with body percussion and a variety of instruments using appropriate technique.
2. Perform simple major/minor melodic patterns with appropriate technique.
3. Perform body percussion and instrumental parts, including ostinatos, while other students play or sing contrasting parts.

Materials/Playing Space: 

Students can stay at their desks for this strategy

Description: 

Poems used in classes were by Shel Silverstein. Teacher/PAIR Specialist introduced body percussion using snap, clap, lap, and stomp. Students were asked to describe the sounds, how they were similar and how they were different, encouraging the use of words such as pitch, volume, and contrast to describe the sounds. Teacher/PAIR Specialist then asked students to play with pattern and tempo using the four body percussion sounds in varying ways.

Boddie-Baker’s class approached this music standard by using a single poem, “The Fourth” by Shel Silverstein and creating three different ‘class rhythms’ to support the tempo of the poem when read out loud. Discussion how the poem and body percussion supported each other is a great way to really integrate this arts strategy!

Walls class worked in small groups after the introduction to body percussion using three different poems, one for each group including Shel Silverstein’s “Snowball,” “Underneath My Outside Face,” and “Listen to the Mustn’t’s.” Students worked in small groups to figure out the rhythm of their poem and then how to use body percussion to emphasize the words in the poem. Such as the first line of “Snowball,” I made myself a snowball…. using two claps with cupped hands as though making a snowball, using body percussion in a more literal visual form to emphasize the poem. With the end of “Underneath,” ending the poem with a stomp on the word ‘me’ emphasizing ownership of who ‘me’ is and not apologizing for it, allowing the body percussion to take on a more emotional interpretation of the poem.

Notes:

As you work with poetry and body percussion, this arts strategy will become even more well integrated by having students compose their body percussion on a 4/4 staff, figuring out where their percussion is a half or quarter note and where they have rests.