I've noticed a lot of music teachers have set up blogs in order to share ideas and to improve their teaching. I have decided to jump on the bandwagon!

First of all, I LOVE teaching music and one of my favorite concepts to teach is the "tika-tika" family.  You know, good old sixteenth notes.  Maybe it's my flute player past that makes me so fond of them or maybe I'm just quirky that way!  I teach tika-tika (four sixteenths) and their combinations tika-ti and ti-tika (double sixteenth-eighth note and vice verse) in the third grade.

After following the three P's of the Kodály method (preparation, presentation and practice) of tika-tika I love having the students read Rondo Alla Turk by Mozart as a late practice activity.  After reading the rhythms via a powerpoint, we add body percussion: the "ta's" (quater notes) are stomps on the feet, the "ti-ti's" (eighth notes) are claps and the "tika-tika's" (you know, those good old sixteenth notes) are patted on the leg with alternating hands.  The thing that's tricky about having students read the rhythms to Rondo Alla Turk is that, in my sequence, students have not learned about anacrusis yet so they must read it without barlines.

I'm a visual person so here's how the original looks:
 And here is how I modified it to make it accessible for my 3rd graders to read:
 Here are the other two main themes:

The 4th theme is a flurry of sixteenth notes.  Given that I can even get lost in there (or so I tell the students) we do a follow the beat of the teacher activity during that section.

Another added variable to this activity is the speed of the recording that you use.  Try searching many examples in iTunes to find one that you like.  You will want to copy and paste the slides from the PDF that I posted below into a powerpoint so you can add your audio file.  I did not post the ppt to this as I used the MusicEd Font for it and not everyone has that.  If you haven't heard of MusicEd Font, you need to buy it: it'll be one of the best $25 you'll ever spend.

I have saved the whole powerpoint as a PDF in Google docs and any one should be able to access it by clicking here.  If for some reason it doesn't work please send me a comment.  Now, I will preface this with the fact that I usually do this activity in the fall so you might want to hang onto it for October! :)