What about those sixth graders?

Some of you have expressed that you would like more ideas of what you can do with sixth-graders. I feel that upper grades, and sixth grade especially, need opportunities with instruments in their hands. For newer teachers, management can be intimidating with instruments. The biggest key to success in that regard is to set clear expectations and maintain those expectations. For example, if the students are playing when they should be silent, have them practice playing and stopping together, listening for the silence. Make it exciting to hear that contrast from sound to silence. If they still can't get it, let them take a turn watching their peers until they are ready to join in and try again. (I actually call it a watching turn.) I'm happy to demonstrate or expound on this more if any of you have questions.

I popped in to see Gayle Bleak at Valley View the other day. She just so happened to be teaching sixth graders. They were playing various instruments to accompany a song. You can see on the board here she has the instrument groupings written out, the form of the song, pitches, the lyrics, and some rhythms. I didn't see the lesson prior, but I can only assume they spent some time delving into the form of the song, possibly learning to sing it, exploring and practicing the rhythms, etc.

I asked Gayle if we could record to share the idea with all of you fabulous teachers and she obliged.

Here are the students playing percussion instruments to accompany Siyahimba.

After the students finished putting the percussion instruments away, they got our their recorders. Gayle made sure to practice procedures such as rest position, warm-up position, and review the note fingerings before having the students accompany the song. I'll attach that video clip in a separate post, because I haven't yet figured out how to do two videos this big in the same post. :)