I don't know about you, but it seems to me the consensus with music teachers is that melodic elements are much more difficult to teach than rhythmic. For me, there's a more "concrete" feeling when teaching rhythmic elements. I use to attributed it to being a woodwind player, but the longer I teach and the more I see how easily kids can learn to sight read and become fluent in melodic elements I believe it's the lack of exposure and language development with it that I received growing up. Language development? Yes, language development. Music is a language, it's a universal language. And I treat the teaching of musical concepts with this in mind. When students come into kindergarten, it's safe to assume that they have been talked to and hopefully read to for the first five years of their lives. With this, kindergarten teachers can build on these language skills that these kiddos have been working on for the first five years of their lives. When they come to us as music teachers, we can' assume that they've been sung to, that they've been rocked, bounced, tickled, danced, etc. We have to start at square one. I'm completely tangenting and could go off on this for a while. But, my point being, kids can be taught to read melodic elements when we as music teachers provide our students with the skills that they need to do so and the consistent practice of reading melodies.
That being said, the best way for students to be successful reading melodies/solfa patterns is for them to first read melodic phrases that are extracted from songs that they know. So, I grouped some of my common songs fragments/phrases into packages that are available on my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Granted, these are not the only songs that I use for these elements, but they are ones that are accessible to students both melodically and rhythmically.
Here's a little example from my Song and Flashcards for Teaching low la packet:
The flashcards come in stick and staff notation and are designed to be cut in half and laminated for long term use.
Within the stick notation, there is plain stick notation:
With the staff notation, it's written in both F=do
These come in the following packets for $1.00 each or $5.50 for the bundle of all of the sets:
I hope you all have a good week! I think some of you are on spring break soon. Ours is the first week in April, although I'm having surgery the week before so I'll have two weeks "off". Either way, have a GREAT week!!!
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