Wesley Heights, Year One
Heil/ Hopper – Jen Weisphal
Learning Objective/Exit Outcomes:
- Students will be able to identify how many sides are on a named shape.
- Students will be able to identify how many vertices are on a named shape.
- Students will represent their knowledge by using body percussion.
- Students will learn music terms in conjunction with math terms.
- Students will create bars of music using angles within shapes to dictate variety.
State Standards:
MGSE3.G.1 Understand that shapes in different categories (e.g., rhombuses, rectangles, and others) may share attributes (e.g., having four sides), and that the shared attributes can define a larger category (e.g., quadrilaterals). Recognize rhombuses, rectangles, and squares as examples of quadrilaterals, and draw examples of quadrilaterals that do not belong to any of these subcategories.
ESGM3.CR.2 Compose and arrange music within specified guidelines. a. Create rhythmic and melodic motives to enhance literature. b. Compose rhythmic patterns in simple meter (e.g. quarter notes, quarter rests, half notes, half rests, barred eighth notes, barred sixteenth notes). c. Compose melodic patterns. d. Arrange rhythmic patterns to create simple forms and instrumentation.
ESGM3.PR.2 Perform a varied repertoire of music on instruments, alone and with others.
a. Perform rhythmic patterns with body percussion and a variety of instruments using appropriate technique.
ESGM3.CR.2 Compose and arrange music within specified guidelines.
a. Create rhythmic and melodic motives to enhance literature.
b. Compose rhythmic patterns in simple meter (e.g. quarter notes, quarter rests, half notes, half rests, barred eighth notes, barred sixteenth notes).
d. Arrange rhythmic patterns to create simple forms and instrumentation.
ESGM3.CN.1 Connect music to the other fine arts and disciplines outside the arts.
a. Describe connections between music and the other fine arts.
b. Describe connections between music and disciplines outside the fine arts.
Integration Area/Subject:
Math and Music
Materials/Playing Space:
A space to draw shapes to create bars of music (i.e. dry erase board, separately on sheets of paper)
Description:
- The PAIR Specialist introduced the concept of Body Percussion, showing the students the four Body Percussion elements used: Clap, Chest Drum, Stomp, and Hand Swipes.
- During this learning time, students identified the differences between the sounds as they practiced them. For example, identifying that claps create a more bright sound while chest drums and stomps are more muted. We also discussed how we can raise and lower the volume of the sound by how we clap our hands or stomp our feet. Additionally, the students learned that the vibrations of the sound from a hand clap are more bright because the vibrations are going into the air around them, whereas with a chest drum, the sound is being absorbed through the body, making it sound lower and more muted.
- Students also identified that the hand swipes are different from the other three sounds because hand swipes are sustained sound, whereas all the other elements are short.
- The teacher then took over, asking students a variety of questions about the elements of shapes. For example: “Clap how many vertices are in a triangle” or “How many sets of parallel lines are in a hexagon?” and the class would clap their answer together. Another strategy to use Body Percussion is identifying True and False by assigning True as a chest drum and False as a clap while the teacher asked questions to assess understanding of content, “True or False: A pentagon has six sides.”
- Lastly, we assigned the three angles a Body Percussion instrument and drew a variety of shapes on the board, numbering the vertices.
- Right Angle = Chest Drum
- Acute Angle = Clap
- Obtuse Angle = Hand Swipes
- We then discussed basic music theory. Every bar of music has four beats. A quadrilateral contains all four beats in a measure of music. A triangle, however, only contains three beats, thus the fourth beat in the triangle measure would be a rest.
- △ Rest |⭖ |▽ Rest | Quadrilateral |
- In the example above, there are four bars of music. They would be represented with these Body Percussion instruments: Clap/Clap/Clap/Rest, Chest Drum/Chest Drum/Chest Drum/Chest Drum, Clap/Clap/Clap/Rest, Clap/Hand Swipe/Hand Swipe/Clap.
Notes:
- If you want to scaffold this strategy up, you could have students then create their own bars of music to share with the class or you could represent bars of music with body percussion and have the students draw angles/shapes they hear.
- You could also great a waltz using different triangles:
- |Obtuse Triangle | Right Triangle | Acute Triangle | Right Triangle |
- It is a good idea to number the angles so everyone goes in the same order when looking at the shapes. This waltz might read as: Hand Swipe/Clap/Clap, Clap/Clap/Chest Drum, Clap/Clap/Clap, Clap Clap/Chest Drum.