It's still Tuesday here in Colorado. . . for another 56 minutes, lol!!! (remember this is the time I started writing this blog post).
I'm on break and I don't have too much of a brain so I'm going to blog about a transition I used a two weeks ago with my fourth graders.
Transitions, remember, are moving smoothly from one activity to another. This one is a rhythmic transition that moves us from an opening song into a reading activity. Now, a little background: two weeks ago we were in the thick of state testing. My 4th graders had testing in the morning and in the afternoon. In music they're working on many things but the high concentration areas of our lesson included working on the treble clef and practicing tom-to (dotted quarter-eighth).
We opened the lesson with "Somebody's Knocking At Your Door."
The main objective of the song was to get them singing together as a group but also sing a song with rhythmic elements that we've been practicing. By the way, the students are singing the moment they enter my door. They know that I meet them at the door, they follow me in and if I'm singing a song they know that they should start singing it and take over the singing of the song. (We always get into a circle, this is routine and I do this with all grade levels). In the previous lesson we had played tom-ti ta ta a drum on the 2nd/last measure of each phrase. (Which, except for the third phrase happens to be a whole note.) When they came in I led them in clapping that with the song that again. I mentioned in the last Transition Tuesday post that I use a lot of non-verbal cues, so once all were in they were seated (still singing.) After another repetition I took out my King of the Mountain cards (still singing) with this one on the top:
Now, my King of the Mountain cards fold in half (along the line you see on the card). They make a mini-tent and can stand on the floor. I had them so that they were all stacked, and there were other cards underneath the one that was visible to them. (I wish I had thought about taking a picture so you could see this easier, I might come back and edit this post next week so it makes more sense) So, as they were singing and got to the second measure of the song I tracked the pattern that they were clapping.
With the next repetition of the song, I took the top card off and showed them this card:
They know me and my expectations well enough that they knew they should clap what I was tracking while they were singing. We did this with a few repetitions, each time with them seeing a different card.
From there we moved right into me saying a pattern and them echoing the pattern (this happened while I was passing out the cards to the students). They've played the game before so they knew what was going to happened and put the cards in front of them. After they echoed a few cards I asked them to read specific student's cards that were already placed on the floor in front of them. This is while I finish up passing out cards. And then from there we moved right into the King of the Mountain Game. (You can read about that game by clicking here)
I hope that you all are having a GREAT week!! I'm on spring break and spending time with my two kiddos but I'm also working on some things for school and TpT. I'm working on a Lego-Recorder file, some melodic Post Office Games and then will start some more song bundles. If you ever have special requests or products that you'd like to see please let me know!
Have a GREAT Wednesday!
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