Final Document PDF

The Use of Visuals and Manipulatives in the
Childrens Choral Rehearsal
By:
Brittany A. McCollum
A project in partial fulfillment of the degree of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Music, Music Education Concentration
The University of New Mexico
April 2015
Project Supervisor: Dr. Regina Carlow
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
Personal Orientation. 1
Purpose of Project & Research Question. 4
LITERATURE REVIEW 6
Working with Young Choirs 6
The Use of Physical Engagement for Visual Stimulation... 9
Visual Stimulations in the Choral Rehearsal. 13
Conclusion. 18
RESEARCH DESIGN 19
Research Design.. 19
Project Overview. 19
Pre-Tests.. 19
Weekly Reflections.. 21
WEEK ONE. 22
Introduction to Lesson. 22
Week One: Rhythm Pre-Test.. 26
Week One: Tonal Pre-Test...... 29
Week One: Expression Pre-Test.. 30
WEEK TWO. 32
Introduction to Lesson.. 32
Week Two: Rhythm..... 36
Week Two: Tonal......... 38
Week Two: Expression.... 40
WEEK THREE. 41
Introduction to Lesson... 41
Week Three: Rhythm........ 45
Week Three: Tonal............ 48
Week Three: Expression....... 51
WEEK FOUR..... 54
Introduction to Lesson.... 54
Week Four: Rhythm....... 58
Week Four: Tonal.......... 60
Week Four: Expression...... 63
WEEK FIVE... 65
Week Five: Rhythm....... 69
Week Five: Tonal........... 71
Week Five: Expression...... 75
WEEK SIX.. 76
Week Six: Rhythm......... 80
Week Six: Tonal............ 83
Week Six: Expression........ 86
WEEK SEVEN.... 88
Week Seven: Rhythm.... 92
Week Seven: Tonal........ 94
Week Seven: Expression.... 97
WEEK EIGHT...... 100
Introduction to Lesson...... 100
Week Eight: Rhythm.... 104
Week Eight: Tonal....... 107
Week Eight: Expression....... 113
CONCLUSION. 115
Discussion..... 115
Post Project Narrative. ...... 118
REFERENCES 120
APPENDIX.. 124
Introduction
Personal Orientation
I have been surrounded by music and musical people for my entire life. Throughout my
childhood I watched my father direct bands and choirs of all ages in public schools and our
church. My grandmother and aunt, were also music educators and directors of church choirs. As
for my mothers side of the family, both my mother and my grandfather were trained singers that
performed within their community and church family. My dad has been the biggest influence in
my musical journey, as he was my band and chorus director for many years. I watched him bring
a variety of music to life with amateur musicians, and as I grew in my own musicianship, I began
to want the same. I wanted to show people what music could do for them as it had done for me.
An important entry point for me was working with choirs. I have been working with
childrens choirs since my sophomore year in high school. I taught a 1st through 3rd grade choir,
called the Music Makers, at my home church in Elkin, North Carolina. My training on how to
teach a childrens choir was informed by watching my dad teach in school and church. It was
during my time with the childrens choir that I began to be aware of the importance of using
visuals and movement to music when working with children. They seemed to learn the words
faster when I included motions (visual movement), and I noticed that they understood what they
were singing if we wrote the words out on the board, and chanted the words with drama and
inflection. We also played games to help them learn to navigate simple musical scores. That was
the extent of my teaching strategies before I decided to study music education in college.
During undergraduate years at Westminster Choir College, I gained a new appreciation of
the process of teaching music to children. I found it fascinating that children learned so much
through musical play. I enjoyed learning what my professors called the sneaky ways to teach
children musical concepts, when all the while they were having fun playing a game. I was
introduced to a variety of different musical teaching methods such as Kodly, Orff, Suzuki,
Dalcroze, etc. These methods had slight differences of how music was to be introduced to young
children, but they all teach children the complex language of music in a developmentally
appropriate way. I experimented with many of these methods in my practice teaching
experiences but noticed almost immediately, that regardless of the approach, the children seemed
to respond better when visuals were a part of the lesson. Some visuals I used were icons, in place
of traditional notation; pictures in place of words, body movement, and manipulatives such as
scarfs, puppets, posters, flags, straws, rubber bands, yarn, etc.
When I moved onto graduate school, I was hired to teach at A Childs Garden, a
preschool where I taught general music to children ages 0 to 5. I was also an intern and later a
teacher for the University of New Mexicos Childrens Chorus, where I was assigned to work
with the 7-9 year olds. In the first year of my teaching during graduate school I was again struck
by how the young singers seemed to enjoy the brightly colored posters and manipulatives that
were a part of my lessons. These visuals assisted me in my focus and organization within the
lesson, but I was soon to learn through my research that visual stimulation helps children learn
subconsciously.
Faced with having to create weekly lesson plans for a choir that was solely my
responsibility, I began to keep a journal about what worked and what did not to help my
planning. I became curious about the utility of visual manipulatives in the choral classroom,
especially in the learning process of beginning singers. Because I tend to comprehend new
concepts more efficiently when there is a visual component attached to the teaching, I began to
see a pattern in my own teaching. Naturally, this comes out in my own teaching; using visuals as
a stimulus to better understand new concepts. In the following pages I will present my research
questions, lay out the design of the research and follow it with a review of related literature
dealing with visuals and manipulatives in the childrens choir rehearsal.
Purpose of the Project & Research Questions

I discovered in my student teaching that working with a PowerPoint slideshow that
followed my lesson plan in Smart Board software not only kept me on track, but kept the
students engaged in the lesson. They looked forward to the next slide in hopes that they would
get to play a game. The other positive aspect of this particular visual aid was the ability to save
my voice. For example, I could put a picture of a formation on the board, point to it, and they
would move to that formation.
Visuals do not have to be limited to stuff on a screen. Manipulatives are just as
powerful, or perhaps even more powerful as a visual tool. When students can touch an object that
they have seen and labeled in their learning process, the learning experience becomes
heightened. If you watch a baby interact with items around them, you will see them staring,
touching, smelling, and tasting the object to make as much sense of it as possible.
Because all these pieces of the puzzle were coming together for me as a teacher in my 2nd
year as a grad student, I decided to do some research on using visual stimulation with children to
see what I could learn on a broader level about best practice in the music classroom; I centered
my research on this question: How do manipulatives and visuals (including metaphors and
movement) assist in teaching rhythmic, tonal, and expressive ideas in the childrens choral
rehearsal
I broke down this question into a four smaller questions for better understanding.
1. How do children respond to learning rhythm through manipulatives and visuals?
2. How do children respond to learning tonality through manipulatives and visuals?
3. How do children respond to learning expression through manipulatives and visuals?
4. Which are the students preferred manipulatives?
As stated earlier, rhythm, tonality and expression are the most frequently taught on a regular
basis in the choral classroom, therefore, I wanted to explore these regions in my own teaching to
see how using manipulatives and visuals could assist in my teaching them.
Literature Review
There are many ways in which visual aids are used within a childrens choral rehearsal.
Whether through the use of exercises, movement, metaphors, or posters and charts displayed
throughout the room, visuals are an important aspect in childrens learning. For example, in a
beginning choir where many children have yet to master reading, the use of images, visual and
aural, are essential elements that help singers make sense of the musical work. Key musical
elements such as rhythm, tonality and musical expression are intended to bring the music to life.
Often the teaching of these concepts involves the use of imagery. While the responsibility lies
with the teacher to decide how they make children aware of these concepts, there are many
teaching models and methods that can assist if need be. These include, but are not limited to, the
Kodly and Dalcroze methods. This review will explore some strategies involving visual
imagery that is considered best practice for use with children in the beginning choral classroom.
Working with Young Choirs

A successful choir is one where the singing children are having a meaningful and
enjoyable experience and one that communicates meaning and enjoyment to its listening
audience through the selections that it interprets (Ortlip, 1986). If there is no meaning to our
teaching, there is no need to teach. There is meaning behind all of our musical teachings, and it is
that meaning that makes the children enjoy their experience. Ortlip goes on to say that there are
six factors that make up a successful choir. These factors are (1) meaningful text, (2) mastery of
physical and vocal details, (3) good intonation, (4) good rhythm, (5) good diction, and (6) good
expression. There are multiple factors that make a good choir, and most, if not all, of these
factors fit into the three areas (rhythm, tonality, and expression) that choral directors strive to
teach in their classrooms. It can be overwhelming at times to decide what challenges we want to
tackle with our choirs, but Ortlip makes it easier for us by condensing some of those challenges
down to a small list.
Young voices are wonderful in that children show a tremendous sensitivity to those
qualities most central to the arts, such as the six factors listed above (Rao, 1980). Children bring
a blank slate to the table. They are so eager to learn, and are extremely sensitive and even
entranced by music. As music educators, we have to understand how our students efficiently
learn, and come up with innovative ways to teach them what music has to offer. The question is,
how should we go about doing this? Is there a right or wrong way to go about this in our
teaching?
There are many opinions on effective teaching, but the overall consensus involves many
approaches. Helen Kemp suggests ...addressing multiple sensessight and feeling, with color
and movementgrabs the attention of the children (Kemp, Tagg, & Shrock, 1989). There are
many tools in which teachers pull from their tool box, and studies have shown that the more
tools we use, the better the students understand (Gault, 2005).
Gault (2005) has studied psychologist Jerome Bruners theories of how humans
demonstrate knowledge. Bruner claims that there are three representations in which people grow
in knowledge. These stages are enactive, iconic, and symbolic representations. Through enactive
representations, students understand and learn through their motor responses. Iconic
representation uses images to teach, and symbolic representations uses symbols. Symbols can
extend from musical notation, to mathematical symbols, to letters in an alphabet that makes up a
language. All three of these representations have some sort of visual aspect to them. Learning
through the use of motor skills, even watching someone else perform a task or move to music is
a strong visual image for a student. To watch a dancer move to music and perform their ideas
and feelings on the meaning or feel of the song can be a powerful experience for an observer or
audience member. However, the power of the experience is doubled when the students get to
move and be involved with the feeling of the music.
Gault (2000) further suggests the iconic and symbolic representations are central in the
teaching of music to young children. Music educators use icons and symbols on a daily basis
while teaching their students. Icons, such as rainbows, can represent a growth and decay in a
musical phrase, while symbols can refer to actual symbols in music (fermatas, staccato,
dynamics, etc.). After we understand how our students learn, we have to intuitively combine
these ways of learning into seamless lesson plans that keep our students attention. As stated
earlier, we cannot wear out one way of teaching; we must be inventive and pull from a variety of
sources to better our students understanding. Visuals are arguably one of the most effective ways
of teaching.
Visual reminders like targets on the wall and posters [are extremely useful]. The old
saying, One picture is worth a thousand words is very true in dealing with children.
One of the suggestions I give in my book is making a chart of pictorial representations of
the story of each song. It is not only interesting to young children to see the music in
pictures, but it also helps them learn and remember the song. - Helen Kemp (Kemp,
Tagg, & Shrock, 1989).
Helen Kemps success with childrens choirs is immeasurable. Her work underscores the
importance of visual stimulation in the choir rehearsal. She noted the change in visual and aural
stimuli in present day childrens lives - noting the absence of such in her own childhood. In the
21st century, childrens lives are often over stimulated. We have to keep up (Patterson &
Kemp, 2008).
In music education the pedagogical practices that stand as the foundation of our artare
scaffolding, lesson plans, labeling music notation, and performance (Everly, 2007). Within
these practices we introduce musical elements such as time, pitch, and tempo along with social,
historical, and cultural concepts in music. Learning to read music involves many of the
previously listed elements, therefore, it makes sense that the most effective way to learn them
would be through visual aspects (Everly, 2007). Visual aspects do not have to be limited to
words or symbols on the board. In the next few sections I will be exploring ways to incorporate
visuals through physical movement and through metaphors and manipulatives.
The Use of Physical Engagement for Visual Stimulation

The teachings of Jacques Emile Dalcroze are well known for highlighting movement
during the teaching process of music. The Dalcroze method of music education is taught by
licensed teachers in settings where the topics of solfege, eurhythmics, and improvisation are
adhered to as a unified program. Movement with the body is a stimulating visual for students to
see the feeling of music in motion. The most popular branch of Dalcroze in music education
settings in the United States involves moving to the rhythm, beat, and/or feeling of the music.
This is known as eurhythmics. Eurhythmics teaches the concepts of space, time, direction, level
and shape. Teachers [and students] who study eurhythmics also gain skill in the execution of
movement, including strength, flexibility, coordination, alignment, balance, articulation, and the
dynamics of energy of effort (Johnson, 1993).
In some cases in western choral music, there is little to no movement involved in
performance or rehearsal process. Eurhythmics breaks that tradition, and teaches students that
music is movement; it should not be mechanical. It is said that Dalcroze challenged his students
to move beyond their mechanical grasp and move toward a more musical grasp (Crosby,
2008). Dalcroze teachers emphasize that movement through eurhythmics heightens the learning
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process, saying: whenever the body moves, the sensations of movement are converted into
feelings that are sent through the nervous system to the brain which, in turn, converts that
sensory information into knowledge (Crosby, 2008).
There are many visual exercises in Dalcroze teaching, and most of them come from
eurhythmics. Kenney (2013) offers a visual exercise dealing with form that stems from
eurhythmics. She organizes her students into four groups: marching, skipping, leaping, and tiptoeing. These groups are only to move during their part of the music. Each group has a theme.
When the students hear their theme they are to do the movement throughout the room (Kenney,
2013). This is a useful visual exercise, as it shows form, and heightens students ears for focused
listening.
Gordon (1975) had other suggestions for physically showing expressive qualities of
music. When showing dynamics he broke them up into numbers one through five; one being
piano, and five being forte. The first stage is represented by incremental steps that span two
inches. Stage two represents approximately a foot apart from one another, while number three is
a regular walking span. Number four is represented by larger steps, and number five are leaps
(Gordon, 1975). Students listen to music and mimic the dynamics with their steps. They could
also sing while they walked, or listen to a recording of their singing and follow their dynamics.
This could also be paired with tempo, in that the students would walk slowly for a slow tempo,
and walk quickly for a fast tempo.
Crosby (2008) offers a physical activity dealing with phrasing that could complement
Gordons movement activity listed above. Crosby suggests using an elastic band while singing
legato phrases. The tension of the band suggests support and balance the students must have over
the band in order to keep it from snapping back on them, mimics a legato sound and keeps the
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breath smooth and even. After moving around the classroom with Gordons activity involving
dynamics, the students can practice standing as if in performance while using Crosbys activity.
Crosby also mentions another simple movement activity that involves having her students stand
when they have the main melody or theme, and sit when they do not. This not only allows
students to see when a certain part of the group has the main melody or theme, it is also a helpful
for dynamic purposes, in that students can visually see when they should be leading the choir and
when they should not (Crosby, 2008).
Lana and Westgate suggest numerous visual activities for childrens choirs in their article
Making Music with Our Youngest Singers. Many of the activities will be listed throughout this
review. One of their activities is a physical breathing exercise that can be used in a young
childrens choir setting. It involves the students pretending that they are holding a bowling ball in
their hands. The students exhale all of the bad air, and as they pull the bowling ball back, they
inhale. When the student bowls, they exhale quickly. Lana and Westgate say that the moving
arm prevents clavicular breathing (Lana & Westgate, 2008).
In addition to breathing exercises, Lana and Westgate further suggest a visual tonal
exercise that gets the students physically involved. They invite young singers to pretend to shoot
a basketball while singing I love to sing on an arpeggiated pattern. This allows for a physical
lift of the ribcage and an imitation of the open mouth space on the words love and I (Lana
& Westgate, 2008). Similar exercises involve students bending their knees; physically going
down while their pitch ascends. These exercises give the students a familiar motion in which to
relate, and they secretly create space for the breath to fall in as they shoot the basketball.
When the body is not moving, the brain is not growing. The mind does not come into
being or grow without bodily movement. Everything that we experience in life depends on the
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transformation of brain activity into muscular activity (Wilson, 1985). In music, there are
multiple transformations that occur from our brains to our muscles. When playing an instrument,
our eyes see the notes on the page, that image is transmitted to our brains, a signal is sent to our
hands, fingers, and/or oral cavity, and we produce music. In the childrens choral setting, the
children hear the instructor sing a phrase, that sound is sent and recognized by the brain and sent
to the throat muscles, and the children sing. These simple explanations briefly outline the
transformation that happens within our bodies when we are singing or playing music.
Children naturally want to move. It is common practice in a choral setting to ask children
to stand still for long periods of time and sing. This is counterproductive to the nature of
children. Lana and Westgate (2008) offer an alternative activity that allows children the
opportunity to move while performing by asking children to imagine that they are a bobble head
doll. Another body engagement exercise is to have children pretend to be a rag doll. The teacher
instructs the students to let their bodies flop over at their waists, and hang (Chivington, 1989).
This position is a wonderful stretch for the lower back, creating a lot of space for the breath.
Metaphors can also be used in a physical manner. Wis (1999) suggests multiple gestures
for improving intonation, and benefits of physical metaphors in the choral rehearsal. One
example is to pretend that they are picking up the note like it is a baby bunny rabbit (with both
hands cupped underneath), and place it on an upper shelf. This metaphor lessens the weight in
the sound, and allows for a beautiful light tone.
Major benefits from physical metaphors include, but are not limited to, less performance
anxiety, better engagement during rehearsal, easier assessment, and easier memorization (Wis,
1999). When directors use physical gestures during the learning process of a song, such as body
solfege or motions that match the words, this can assist in the memorization of a song and lessen
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performance anxiety. The singers can then focus on the gesture as they sing. When the students
are doing the same motion together, it makes assessment much easier for the instructor. This way
the teacher can easily tell who is and who is not engaged in the rehearsal. Not only is it helpful
for the teachers, but physical movements in the rehearsal can help the students stay involved in
the rehearsal. By giving them a motion of which they are in charge, this gives them
accountability to stay involved with the rehearsal process.
Visual Stimulations in the Choral Rehearsal

There are numerous visual stimulation exercises that are appropriate for childrens choir.
Chivington (1989) incorporates straws into her lesson to demonstrate breath inhalation. Using a
manipulative allows for students literally to hold something in their hand. The interaction with
manipulatives creates more transmissions to occur between the muscles and the mind. In the case
of the straw, when the students hold it up to their lips to sip in the air, their mouth is
automatically prepared for an oo vowel. When they sip the air through the straw, it allows for
them to feel their soft palate on the inhalation. Chivington calls it the cold air sip.
Breathing is where singing begins. After experiencing strong breathing exercises, such as
the cold air sip, that Chivington suggested, we want our students to be able to recognize and
match a variety of pitches. At an early age, children are experimenting with their voices and
learning to connect and recognize pitches within their instrument. The ability to match pitch and
extend those pitches to actual musical phrases is a skill that the director must attend to on a
consistent basis. Lana and Westgate (2008) suggest a few exercises that can help with this in a
beginning choir. One of them involves starting rehearsal by asking your singers to sing a certain
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pitch, such as A-440. This can instill a good sense of relative pitch among young singers if sung
at the beginning of every rehearsal.
Another suggested exercise is using a unicorn horn as a visual to lift the pitch out of the
forehead. The exercise I was familiar with going through choir was pulling a piece of spaghetti
out from between your eyes. This visual was to focus the sound of the choir, and give it a more
focused tone. The unicorn visual takes the spaghetti visual to a higher level, in that the placement
of the unicorns horn is between the eyes, but instead of coming straight out of the forehead, the
horn comes out and up at a slight angle. This will not only focus the sound, but it will also lift the
tone for better tuning (Lana & Westgate, 2008).
Not only do we want our students to be able to sing beautifully in tune, but we also want
to instill a sense of independence in them. Many directors claim that they do not have time to
teach sight reading skills to their singers, as they have to prepare for their performance. Lana and
Westgate offer alternative games that teach children that valuable skill of reading music. These
games can be used at any time during the class period, but it would also be a great way to start
and end the day. One of the games involves only pitch. They start with a grid of dots, like so:
m
The columns represent the beats within the measure, and the rows represent the pitches do, re,
and mi. The students would circle the pitches that they hear or see on the correct beats. The
teacher could sign the pitches, sing them, play them on the piano, or all of the above (Lana &
Westgate, 2008). This is a wonderful start of dictation for the little ones, and it allows them to
see the contour of the musical line.
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Metaphors can be used for visuals in the mind. Music is an art of the abstract. It exists in
time. Metaphor, then is in its origin an attempt to express in terms of experience thoughts lying
beyond experience, to express the abstract in terms of the concrete, to picture forth the unfamiliar
by means of the familiar, to express insensuous thought by sensuous terms (Cornelius, 1982).
Childrens choir conductors can use metaphors to convey sounds that they desire from the
ensemble, and this can be through verbal or physical gestures. Because music is so abstract, and
people can have varying opinions on it, it is suggested that directors use multiple metaphors to
demonstrate their view on the music. Sometimes students can misunderstand one way of
explanation, therefore, having multiple ways of saying generally the same thing can be helpful.
Singing can also be abstract for some students. Neuen suggests an important visual
metaphor for the way the breath activates the vocal folds. He says,
Imagery is the key: First, imagine that there are no vocal chords in the throat, but that
it is simply a hollow passageway through which a column of air flows upward to the head
(not the mouth). Second, imagine the column of air traveling up the back of the neck on
its way to the top of the head. Third, imagine that the vocal cords are located in the area
of the brain: When the stream of air comes into contact with the vocal cords, it
immediately activates them just as a guitarists fingers activate the guitar strings
(Neuen, 1988).
This imagery might be a bit of a stretch for some of the smallest singers in kindergarten or first
grade, but the older elementary and middle school students could definitely understand this
imagery and be able to utilize it in their singing. Neuen gives us the visual metaphor to think
about, but a director could take this metaphor and turn it into a visual image for students to better
understand. By showing them a simple drawing of the throat and where their vocal chords are
located, the students can physically touch their necks in the approximate place of the vocal
chords and imagine their location. The director could also have students strum a guitar string to
feel the physical sensation of making sound with an instrument. However, the director must
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explain that there are no fingers in our throats to activate our vocal chords, so what we use
instead is our breath.
Thomsen wrote an article that provides an overview of Dalcroze solfege by describing
its methodology and by offering sample exercises for beginners as well as advanced students
(Thomsen, 2011). In her article she provides many helpful visual examples that could be useful
in a choral rehearsal. One in particular was a tonal, solfege activity that involved five cups placed
upside down that had the numbers one through five written on the bottom of them. The teacher
places a prize (an M&M or a marble) underneath one cup while the students are not looking, and
then the game begins. The teacher improvises for two phrases. On the first phrase, the teacher
ends on the tonic pitch (cup number one), and on the second phrase they end on a different scale
degree (the one with the hidden prize). The students must interpret the correct scale degree, or in
other words, which cup had the prize. This is such a wonderful visual and aural game because
the students get to experience improvisation, and listening and following contour of a melody
(Thomsen, 2011).
In the Kodly teaching practices, there are many visuals and icons used on a regular basis
in music classrooms. Most of the icons are used to lead students into reading standard musical
notation. Zoltan Kodly is known for his closeness to ordinary people in the villages and fields
in [the] days from 1905 onwards, when he, joined by Bartok the following year, began the
gigantic task of collecting, analyzing, and publishing the vast, but untapped wealth of Hungarian
folk music (DOmbrain, 1968). Kodly believed that folk songs of the mother tongue
[constituted] a musical mother tongue (Scott, 2008). His philosophy included his strong belief
of learning folk songs, but also included his belief that all people are capable of learning music,
and singing is the best way to teach musicianship. Starting music at a young age will give you
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the best result. He also believed that only highly artistic music should be studied, and music
should always be the center of a curriculum (Scott, 2008).
Kodly, teachers play a lot of musical games to teach children musical concepts. Kodly
says:
The child remembers the tune of the singing game together with the joyful experience of
movement and later the tune alone recalls the totality of the experience. The relationship
between stimulus and response is strengthened by the emotional relationship to the
melody which the child establishes as he plays singing gamesin this way the engrams of
auditory and rhythmic perceptions become attached to movement, play, dancing, and
laughter. The linking of the material of music to such emotional reactions provides the
proper basis for the development of musical concepts (Kokas, 1970).
Most, if not all, of the musical games in the Kodly method have a visual aspect attached to
them. This helps to teach musical literacy to a variety of ages. Literacy can [be] achieved with
iconic notationa kindergartener can achieve literacy with iconic notation that is
developmentally appropriate (Mason, 2012). Our youngest singers, who cannot yet read, use
icons and symbols to begin their music literacy understanding. Arpad Darazs explains it well by
saying at the beginning the symbol is a visualization of tonal meanings already experienced by
ear. As the association is strengthened, the symbols come to convey tonal meanings, and through
long experience the learner becomes able to look at the symbols and hear in his mind the music
they represent (Darazs, 1966).
In Bonnie Jacobis article, Kodly, Literacy, and the Brain, Jacobi gives multiple visual
examples that are used in the Kodly method; one being a pre-staff preparation for students.
Students can show melodic contour with their bodies, and their fingers can represent the lines in
the staff. Jacobi also lists multiple manipulatives that can be used in the choral rehearsal such as
streamers, scarves, yarn, pipe cleaner, balls, straws, etc. A personal favorite that Jacobi mentions
is body solfege. This is great for kids to get kinesthetically involved in the rehearsal. Do is
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represented by the hands on the hips, re, the arms crisscrossed against the chest, mi, hands
on the shoulders, sol, hands on the head, and la, hands up above the head (Jacobi, 2011).
Body solfege is definitely versatile, but whatever the director decides to do at the beginning of
the year needs to be consistent throughout each rehearsal.
Conclusion
Using visuals in the choral rehearsal can exemplify learning and understanding the
musical language. Visuals are not limited to things written on a whiteboard, they can also be
metaphors, icons, symbols, and ways in which we move to music. Music is a language, therefore,
it is our job as music educators to teach our students how to read and understand the language.
Just as we learn to read by recognizing symbols and letters on a page, we learn to read music by
reading and recognizing symbols written on a musical staff.
Music educators use methods such as Kodly and Dalcroze in their classrooms. Both of
these teaching methods are visually stimulating. Kodly involves the use of icons and symbols to
the beginner student for means of reading musical notation. Kodly himself believed that every
student deserved to learn how to read and understand the beauty of music, and starting young
would yield the best result. The only way young students can read before they can actually
read is through images and icons. As stated before, children today are visually stimulated by
their cultural surroundings (television, computers, etc.), and as Helen Kemp tells us, we must
keep up with the times!
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Research Design
I began this project by becoming aware of my own teaching; what I was doing well and
what needed improvement. The most consistent trait I noticed in my teaching was my use of
visuals. I use visuals for many reasons, but mainly because it helps me stay on track, and it keeps
the students engaged throughout the lesson. What I needed to improve on was the way in which I
used these visuals in the classroom. I felt like there was a purpose behind them, but no
assessment to verify that purpose other than the concert at the end of the semester. I wanted my
students to leave my classroom knowing something about the songs that they had performed, and
not just the words that made up the song.
Project Overview
I chose to organize my project around three aspects of music: rhythm, tonality and
expression. I wanted to know how manipulatives and visuals (including movement and
metaphors) assisted in teaching rhythm, tonal concepts, and expression to students in a choral
setting. Many directors worry so much about the final performance that they end up banging out
notes until the song is learned, and they do not even bother with teaching basic musical
knowledge. I will create lesson plans for 8 weeks of rehearsal for a 14 week season that
culminates in a concert. Each of these lessons will include teaching of rhythmic, tonal, and
expressive ideas. Each lesson will include an assessment to show me if the teaching with visual
aspects was meaningful and helpful to the students.
Pre-Tests
The first of the eight lesson plans will include a pre-test. The pre-test will be designed to
show me where the students stand in their knowledge of rhythm, tonality and expression. The
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rhythm pre-test will be called Poison Pattern. It will involve the students clapping a given four
beat rhythm. Once they have identified and clapped this rhythm, it will become poisonous. I will
clap various rhythms while the students echo them back, however, if I clap the poisonous rhythm
and the students echo that rhythm back, they will be out. Because this is a game, I will be
trying to trick them, but it will also show me that they are capable of recognizing certain
rhythmical patterns.
The tonal pre-test will consist of my singing a song for the students. I will identify tonic,
put a motion to it, and we will all sing it together. While I am singing my song I will pause every
so often, signal the choir with the sign that I want them to sing the tonic pitch, they will sing it on
a bum, and then I will proceed in singing more of the song. If they sing something other than
the tonic pitch, this will tell me that we should not start at a level any higher than this with their
tonal exercises. If the students sing the tonic successfully, that will tell me that we can start
learning solfege syllables.
The expression pre-test will incorporate a hoberman sphere as manipulative. I will teach
the choir a simple four measure round with no musical expression; I will sing the notes on a
single dynamic. Once they have learned the piece and have sung it successfully a few times
without my help, I will ask them to follow the motion of the hoberman sphere with their voices.
As the hoberman sphere grows in size what might your voice do to reflect that? When we start
singing the song the hoberman sphere will be at normal size. As the song goes on I will make the
sphere larger, signaling that they grow with it in dynamics. If they do not grow in dynamics, then
this will be our starting point, and if they do grow we will move on to other expressive qualities
the following week.
21
During the remaining seven weeks the lesson plans will be written with activities that
visually teach rhythm, tonality, and expression. After the pre-tests have been completed I will
design lessons that gradually increase in difficulty for rhythm, tonal, and expressive musical
qualities.
Weekly Reflections
During the eight week period I will be keeping a journal of reflections for the rhythm,
tonal, and expressive activities that are done in class. I will introduce each lesson and follow it
with the journal entry that includes detailed descriptions of how the activity was received by the
students.
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Week 1
Introduction: Week One
Week ones lesson plan is meant to determine where the students are in their tonal,
rhythmic, and expressive knowledge of music. Many of my students have different musical
backgrounds, therefore, I need to determine a solid starting point for this eight week project. This
starting point will help me to better determine where the ending point could be for this particular
set of students.
Beginning with rhythm, I will introduce a game that involves the students listening to
rhythmic patterns and clapping them back. One particular pattern will be designated
poisonous. If the students clap this pattern back, they will be out of the game. This game is
meant to keep the students on their toes with their listening skills. It is simple to echo back short
patterns, but I am taking it a step further by having them listen critically to what patterns and
rhythms are being clapped. This game will also determine whether I will ask more of them later
in the lesson.
Immediately after rhythm we will move to a tonic exercise. I wanted to see if they could
hold tonic in their minds while I sang other pitches in a short song. I will give them a pitch and
instruct them to sing this pitch on bum when I give them a certain signal with my arms.
Lastly, I will see where they lie in their understanding of musical expression. I will teach
the students a short round, Ah, Poor Bird, using no expression in my voice. As soon as they
have learned the words and correct notes, I will incorporate a hoberman sphere as a
manipulative. As the sphere grows larger, their voices should grow in volume, and as the sphere
grows smaller, their voices should lessen in volume.
23
In preparation for the following weeks, I will incorporate body solfege in the song Give
Me a Kite. This will give the students a chance to catch on to the kinesthetic aspect of solfege
before we start labeling the different pitches.
The visual aspects in this lesson include the poison pattern game on the promethean
board (see on following journal entries), body motions that tell the students when to sing, and a
hoberman sphere. Please see the lesson plan on the next page, followed by in depth descriptions
of how each part of the lesson was received.
Lobo Choir: Week 1Pre-assessment

GRADES 2ND-4TH
APRIL 6, 2015
Materials
Microphone
Rhythm Sticks
Rain Stick
Warm Up (15)
Che Che Koolay game. I will be in the middle of the circle leading the song and the
students will echo my singing and my body movements.
Rhythm
Lobo Listener and Rockin Respect award announcement.
Poison Pattern
Poison Pattern. The rhythms that will be poison will be (l l l ll, z l ll l, and l z ll l).
This will show me how well they understand quarter notes, quarter rests, and eighth
notes.
Tonal
Way Down in the
African Jungle
Expression
Introduce tonic. Sing it on bum together. Sing through Way Down in the African
Jungle. Every time I pause, they have to sing the tonic pitch on bum. This will tell
me whether or not they recognize and understand tonic in a song.
Ah, Poor Bird
Clouds (10)
Manipulatives
Rhythm sticks
Hoberman Sphere
Brainstorm some shapes that they have seen while looking at the clouds. Go
around with the microphone and ask them when you look at the clouds what do
you see? They will respond with what they see (singing measures 23 and 24
unknowingly).
Movement
Teach mm. 5-19 by echoing. Sing together at least two times fully.
Make rain
Body Solfege
Listen to the Rain (10)
Metaphors
Let them listen to a rain stick.

Make rain with our bodies.
Visuals
Whisper mm. 2-5 before making rain
Clouds
I Wont Grow Up (10)

Pass out rhythm sticks. Echo rhythms. Echo words.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sye2NanCYHI
Watch the video, but tell them that this wont be exactly what well be singing.
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Company Name
Street Address
Address 2
Phone
Fax
E-mail
Were on the Web!
Web Address
Ah, Poor Bird (7)

Teach the song with no expression in the voice; just teach the notes. Once they can
sing it by themselves, add the hoberman sphere for dynamic expression. Ask them if
this ball is getting bigger, what do you think our voices should do?
Give Me a Kite (10)

Play recording and have them follow my movement (body solfege). Using body
solfege, learn up to measure 29.
Shalom My Friends (3)

Sing round together as they depart.
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Week One: Rhythm Pre-Test
The purpose of the pre-test was to show me where the students were in their rhythm
skills. In my particular situation, my students are coming to me from many different musical
environments; some are taking private music lessons, and some only have music exposure at
school (every other year). Regardless of their situation, I am unaware of where they stand
rhythmically, therefore, I wanted to get a better sense of that through a few rhythmic activities.
Last semester we learned quarter notes and rests, eighth notes, and whole notes and rests.
They were able to read and perform patterns in duple meter by the end of the semester, so I
wanted to see, first, if they remembered those patterns, and second, if they could correctly
perform them. The first activity that I set up was called Poison Pattern. This dealt with having
a designated rhythm that was poisonous. If the teacher clapped that rhythm and a student or
students clapped it back, they were out. The first rhythm was ta, ti-ti, ta, ta. I wanted to start
with a quarter note because I find it to be more stable for them instead of starting with eighth
notes right away.
The response I got from the students was very positive. Of course, I am trying to trick
them while playing this game, so I realize that some students could have gone on auto pilot, but
still understand the concept. However, they all seemed to be listening by the second and third
round. For the second round, I had a student create a rhythm. She had the choice of choosing
between three options; a quarter note, quarter rest, and eighth notes. She created ti-ti, ta, ti-ti,
rest. I was glad to see that she chose to start with eighth notes for this round. As stated before,
the students were much more attentive for this round, as it was harder for me to trick them.
The visual for this activity is shown below.
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The second pre-test dealt more with dictation rather than reading rhythm. My thoughts
with doing a second pre-test in rhythm stemmed from wanting an overall understanding of how
rhythms function, rather than just knowing how they sound. As an introduction to one of our
songs, I Wont Grow Up from Peter Pan, I tapped out three rhythms. The rhythms were ta, ta,
ta, ta, ti-ti, ti-ti, ti-ti, ta, and ti-ti, ti-ti, ti-ti, ti-ti. Where the poison pattern exercises was a
visual exercise that only involved the smart board, this exercise involved rhythm sticks as an
instrument and manipulative. However, it also incorporated the smart board, as I put the rhythms
on the board for them to see as they were dictated.
The students recognized the first rhythm, ta, ta, ta, ta, immediately, and dictated it with
no problem at all. The second rhythm, ti-ti, ti-ti, ti-ti, ta, was a different story. I called on a
student to give me an answer, and his answer was ti-ti, ti-ti, ti-ti, ti-ti. I put his rhythm up on
the board, and we played it on our rhythm sticks. We then played the original rhythm with our
rhythm sticks. We went back and forth a few times so they could listen to see if there was any
difference between the two. I noticed that a few students knew right away that the rhythms were
not the same, but I wanted everyone else to be able to hear the difference. After playing them a
few times, I called on the fidgeting girl to my right. She told me that we needed a quarter note at
the end of the line instead of an eighth note. Everyone was in agreement after that change was
made. The third rhythm, ti-ti, ti-ti, ti-ti, ti-ti, was also immediately identified and dictated.
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The last and final step of this exercise was to see if they could recognize words with
rhythms. I sang three separate phrases to them. They were I wont grow up, I dont wanna go
to school, and just to learn to be a parrot. I had the three rhythms listed above listed vertically
with space underneath each of them for the words to be written. I started singing I wont grow
up, and student I called on said that those words went with the rhythm ti-ti, ti-ti, ti-ti ta. I saw
confused faces and a few head shakes, but instead of dismissing the student, I asked the class to
clap the rhythm while I sang the words to see if their claps fit with my words. I think doing that
clarified the activity not only for that student that initially answered incorrectly, but also for the
rest of the class as well. Figuring out how the other two phrases fit within the rhythms given was
no problem for them.
These two activities have shown me that they are ready for more challenging rhythms.
Not necessarily ready to jump into sixteenth notes, but I think they are ready to read and dictate a
phrase longer than one measure with quarter notes and rests and eighth notes. They responded
very well to the visual stimulus of the smart board and the rhythm sticks manipulative.
29
Week One: Tonal Pre-Test
The purpose of the pre-test was to show me where the students were in their tonal skills.
In my particular situation, my students are coming to me from many different musical
tonally, therefore, I wanted to get a better sense of that through a tonal exercise.
I directed this group last semester, and we did not do any activities that were geared
toward reading music. We spoke a lot about unifying our sound, and making sure that we were
singing the same note as our neighbor, but that was our extent to tonal knowledge. I knew that I
had not taught them any solfege.
My first question involved students ability to recognize tonic throughout a song. I sang a
personally composed tune called Way Down in the African Jungle. Before I started singing the
song, our accompanist played a note on the piano. I asked the students to sing that note on bum
when I gave them the signal (motioning to them with my arms forward and palms upward). I
sang two measure phrases in common time, and at the end of the phrase the students sang bum
on the tonic pitch. Altogether, there were eight, two measure phrases, and at the end of every
phrase the students sang the tonic pitch perfectly.
My first thought was, well now what do I do? I was glad to see and hear that they
understood home base. However, even though they can internalize tonic, I do not believe that
all of them know how to label the note. My next step in the process will be to label tonic as do.
From there we can start labeling other pitches on the staff.
30
Week One: Expression Pre-Test
The purpose of the pre-test was to show me where the students were in their expressive
skills. In my particular situation, my students are coming to me from many different musical
expressively, therefore, I wanted to get a better sense of that through an expressive exercise.
What I mean by using the word expression, is expressive qualities in music. This can
include, but is certainly not limited to, dynamics, articulation markings, phrasing, breathing, etc.
The only thing that we did with expression last semester in this choir was phrasing. I used
scarves to show phrasings of certain songs we were singing. I remember them responding well to
the scarves, but unfortunately, we did not delve deeply into dynamics or articulations.
The activity that I used to see where they stood with their understanding of dynamic
expression involved a hoberman sphere as a manipulative. I started out by teaching them the
round Ah, Poor Bird. I sang the round in its entirety with no expression in my voice at all. We
echoed the phrases back and forth until they could sing the entire song by themselves. Once they
knew the song, I introduced the hoberman sphere. Most of them had used it with me last
semester with vocal siren exercises; as the ball got bigger, their voices got higher. However, in
this case, they were singing a song and could not do a siren. I asked them what they thought they
should do with their voices as the sphere got larger, but I did not want them to answer out loud.
Half of the class heard that my voice ascended in pitch when the ball expanded. This was true
due to the melodic contour of the song, however, I directed them to listen for other things my
voice was doing as the sphere expanded. After the directional hint, their response was unanimous
in saying that our voices grew in volume as the sphere enlarged.
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The use of the hoberman sphere allowed for a smoother crescendo and decrescendo. A lot
of the time, choirs struggle with having a steady crescendos and decrescendos; they tend to get
too loud too quickly or too soft too quickly. With the hoberman sphere, one visually sees the
growth and decay happen smoothly. I noticed that some of the students started to grow with their
bodies as the sphere grew, and they began to crouch back down as the sphere collapsed. This
movement, Im sure, was just another response they had from viewing the sphere grow and
decay.
Where I take the choir from here in terms of expression will deal mostly with the
repertoire they will be singing. That is the beauty of teaching in a choral setting, the teacher can
use the music the students are learning to build a bridge to new learning.
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Week Two
Introduction: Week Two
Week twos lesson plan was the start of our journey though the next seven weeks. I will
use visual aids to assist my teaching of rhythm, tonal, and expressive qualities in music. Each
lesson will progress in difficultly as the weeks go on, but have the consistent use of visual aids to
assist in the learning process. The three main intentions of this lesson was to learn and
understand the tonic pitch, dynamic differences, and beat verses rhythm.
The lesson will start with learning the solfege name for tonic, do. In last weeks lesson,
they sang tonic on bum when I gave them the signal to sing. This week, I will label tonic as
do, but I will also add the dominant pitch, sol. Almost every phrase in the song that I will be
singing begins with these two pitches, sol (lower dominant) and do. I will also ask that they
do the body solfege when those two pitches are heard at the beginning of a phrase.
I will be introducing one of the songs we will be singing in our concert by singing the
first few phrases with dynamic contrast. I will be using a hoberman sphere again as a
manipulative to show dynamic contrasts. It is important that the students transfer the knowledge
from last weeks lesson to this weeks lesson using a different song.
I noticed that the students were capable of reading and recognizing simple rhythms
during last weeks lesson. For this weeks lesson, I wanted to make sure they understood the
difference between beat and rhythm. We will be using one of the songs for our concert, I Wont
Grow Up, to aid us in understanding the difference. I will be using teddy bears to represent the
big beats in the measures.
33
The visual aspects in this lesson include body solfege for tonic and dominant pitches, a
hoberman sphere, and teddy bears that will represent the four beats in a measure. Please see the
lesson plan on the next page, followed by in depth descriptions of how each part of the lesson
was received.
Lobo Choir: Week 2

Tonic; Dynamic Differences; Beat
vs. Rhythm
GRADES 2ND-4TH
APRIL 6, 2015
Materials
Hoberman Sphere
Rhythm Sticks
Rain Stick
Teddy Bears (8)
Rhythm
Beat vs. Rhythm
I Wont Grow Up
Tonal
Way Down in the
African Jungle
Draw a Bucket of
Water
Give Me a Kite
Expression
Listen to the Rain
Warm Up (15)
Draw a Bucket of Water song and game (sol and do).
Sing through Way Down in the African Jungle. Every time I pause, they have to sing
the tonic pitch on bum. Label this bum as do. Sing through with them singing
do instead of bum.
Sing through again and have them follow your body movements. Every phrase that
begins with low sol going to do, touch your knees for low sol and your hips for
do. Label sol and sing through one last time with them singing sol do at the
beginning of those phrases.

Start seated. Whisper beginning having them echo while using the rain stick. Sing
through with hoberman sphere while they listen.
Whisper beginning again with rain stick, and have them echo. Have them mimic the
hoberman sphere with their bodies as I sing this time.
Manipulatives
Repeat whispers in the beginning again, but ask them what comes next? Get the
words down, and sing through mm.15 at least two times with hoberman sphere
Rhythm sticks
Hoberman Sphere
Teddy Bears
I Wont Grow Up (15)
Movement
Make rain
Body Solfege
I Wont Grow Up
Metaphors
Visuals
Clouds
Start singing and moving to the beginning, and have them

echo words and movements.
Learn mm. 13-22 echoing.
Split into two groups. The groups will be facing each other.
Each group will have four single file lines, and the lines will be
facing one another. The four people at the front of the lines
will have teddy bears in their hands. They will hold the bears
and drop them on their designated beat (1, 2, 3, or 4) while
singing through the echo section. At mm. 13 the front row will
stand, hand their bear to the person behind them, and walk to
the back of their line. Repeat until everyone has had a turn
with the bears.
Heres an easy way

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the basis for a new
paragraph,
character, or list
style:
1.
2.
Give Me a Kite (10)

Play recording and have them follow my movement (body solfege). Hopefully, they
will remember that we labeled sol and do earlier, but if they dont Ill give them a
hint. Well sing through a few times on solfege (only singing sol and do, if its
another pitch just sing it on oo.
Select the
text, on the
Format
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Formatting,
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Youll see all
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Make sure they have their words down.
Name your
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check the Add
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click OK.
Start at the beginning and learn up to measure 35 in sequential order.
Company Name
Street Address
Address 2
Phone
Fax
E-mail
Were on the Web!
Web Address
Clouds (10)
Start singing the beginning and have them join in if they remember. Whisper in
someones ear to go in the center of the circle and be a spaceship. Tell the class to
guess what he is, and then well sing about him. Do this for dove and butterfly as
well.
Reveal pictures of a spaceship, dove and butterfly on the board after people act
them out.

36
Week Two: Rhythm

After last weeks success with the poison pattern game, and dictating simple rhythms
with quarter notes, eighth notes and quarter rests, I wanted to take a step back to make sure the
students knew the difference between beat and rhythm. Knowing this difference will come in
handy when they are dictating more difficult rhythms later on in the semester. I would like to
make a note that there were about eight new students in the choir this week that were unable to
do the pre-test the week prior. I did not repeat any activity from last week.
I began this activity by clapping a steady beat and having the students join me in
clapping. Once unified, we started to echo sing I Wont Grow Up from Peter Pan. We clapped
the steady beat the entire time we were echo singing. After singing about four phrases, I asked if
anyone knew the difference in meaning between the word beat and rhythm. Some of the
answers I got were a beat is what were clapping and rhythm is what were talking, and a beat
is a steady sound and a rhythm is a changing sound. I went with the steady and changing
definition so the students could understand that the beat never changes; it is steady all the way
through a song. The rhythm of the words that were saying changes; sometimes the words are on
the beat, and sometimes they are not.
The activity to go along with this idea of beat and rhythm involved the students sitting in
two rows facing each other. Each row had four students in it, representing the four beats in each
measure. The rest of the students were lined up behind the front four students. After singing and
keeping the steady beat for eight measures, the front row stood up to go to the back as everyone
sang the eight measures that followed.
I decided to have them face one another in hopes that it would help to look at their peers
across from them in case they were not getting the concept right away. The first group did a good
37
job for the most part, hitting their bear on the correct beat. As the groups went on, the students
got better and better with the exercise. There were a select few students that hit their teddy bear
on the correct beat every time.
Even though there was success within this exercise, I want to revisit it next week with a
slightly different approach, and a little more explanation. I believe it is of the utmost importance
to instill that inner, steady beat into our students ears and bodies when performing, singing, and
listening to music. With that being said, I would like to spend one more week on instilling that
steady beat not only with the exercise used this week, but with other exercises as well.
38
Week Two: Tonal

After last weeks success with the choirs being able to recognize tonic, or home base, I
wanted the tonal activity for this week to involve labeling tonic as do. I would like to make a
note that there were about eight new students in the choir this week that were unable to do the
pre-test the week prior. I made a quick alteration of running through last weeks exercise before
starting the labeling process. This actually assisted the students in learning the words to the song,
in that they were able to hear the song in its entirety multiple times.
After quickly running through last weeks exercise, I explained to the students that the
bum we had been singing was going to get a name today, and its name was do. I sang
through the entire song, and when I paused to give them the signal, they sang do. They hit
every do correctly, as expected.
Because they were doing so well with recognizing do, my next step was to introduce
sol. I lead into this by having them follow my movements (body solfege). This meant that the
signal for singing do was going to be changed. Instead of holding my arms out with my palms
up, the new signal was my fingertips touching my hips. They followed beautifully.
After we sang through the song with their following my movement, I asked them what
my new signal was for do; making sure that they knew pointing to their hips was going to be
the new do. I then explained that when I sang a lower note I was touching my knees, and this
notes name was sol. We sang sol and do a few times together, and then we transferred that
to the song. Each phrase that started with the notes sol and do were sung on exactly that;
sol and do, while the rest of the phrase was sung on the words. This was a bit challenging in
that they were still unsure of a few of the words, but as far as tonality goes, they were hitting
each note correctly.
39
Not only did we sing do and sol where they fit in the song, but in the middle of
singing the song I would pause every now and then to point to my hips or my knees. To my
surprise, the majority of the class sang do when I pointed to my knees. There was only about
three or four students that sang the correct note, sol, when I pointed to my knees. After hearing
that I went back and forth between pointing to my hips and my knees to see if they would catch
on, but unfortunately that was not the case. However, once distinguishing the difference between
them by saying and pointing to my hips at the same time that do was up here, and then I slid
my voice and hands down to my knees and said and sol is down here. I think that got many
more light bulbs to go off within the group.
Luckily, one of our songs goes back and forth with sol and do quite a bit; Give Me a
Kite by Andy Beck. Last week the students followed my movements (body solfege) while
listening to a recording of the entire song. I used the same movements for do and sol that I
used in the above exercise. Again, I repeated the exercise of their following my movements one
time through. The second time, I did not take them all the way through, instead, we sang the first
theme on bum with the body solfege, hoping that they would recognize the movement from
earlier in the rehearsal. They recognized the movements, all of them sang do correctly, and I
would say over half of them this time sang sol correctly when I pointed to my knees! However,
later in the song when asking them to sing sol a little less than half sang the correct note.
I believe that they understand the concept, and the movements are visually helping them
place where do and sol is in their voices. However, I do think that they need a little more time
practicing the two notes within different song settings. This will be a goal for next week, along
with showing where do and sol live on the musical staff.
40
Week Two: Expression
Last week the students responded beautifully to dynamics with the use of the hoberman
sphere. I would like to make a note that there were about eight new students in the choir this
week that were unable to do the pre-test the week prior. I decided to have this exercise be an
aural learning experience with the visual stimulation from the hoberman sphere for dynamics.
This exercise was very similar to last weeks, but I wanted the new students to experience it as
well.
The first step was to have them listen and watch as I sang the opening phrases while
opening and closing the hoberman sphere to match the volume of my voice as much as possible.
The next step involved them following the hoberman sphere with their bodies. As it grew fuller,
they grew taller, and as it got smaller, the students crouched back down into a ball.
After moving through these two steps, I asked them what they noticed about the
connection between my voice and the hoberman sphere. I had some students say that as the ball
got bigger, or higher, my voice got higher. Even though that was happening along with dynamic
changes, I did not acknowledge that as the answer for which I was looking. One student hit the
nail right on the head, saying: I feel like your voice is getting louder when the ball gets bigger.
From there, I taught the words to the song so they only had to focus on the growth and
decay of their voices. We sang through the opening measures a few times with their voices and
bodies growing with the sphere. It is not only a good tool for visually showing dynamics, but
phrasing as well. Because our dynamics were so expressive through those measures, it
automatically made the phrasing flow beautifully.
41
Week Three
Introduction: Week Three
Week threes lesson plan deals mainly with labeling. The students will be reviewing what
they have learned in last weeks lesson, but will take it one step further through labeling certain
aspects in music. The three main intentions of this lesson was to learn where tonic and dominate
pitches lived on the musical staff, to label our dynamic differences as piano and forte and we get
to those dynamics by crescendos and decrescendos, and solidifying our understanding of beat
verses rhythm.
Last week we began by playing a singing game called Draw a Bucket of Water. This
song had many occurrences of tonic and lower dominant pitches. To begin this weeks lesson,
we will play the game again, but add in body solfege in hopes that they will remember doing
those movements last week with a different song. This will lead into putting the notes on the
musical staff.
To label dynamic differences, we will use the same song from the previous week. I will
be introducing piano, forte, crescendo and decrescendo. I will mention messa de voce only
because it does occur in this song, but I will not put as much emphasis on this as I will on the
other four dynamic markings listed prior. They will go from using the hoberman sphere as a
manipulative to following the dynamic markings on the promethean board (see visuals in this
weeks journals).
Last week I felt that the students understood the concept of beat and rhythm, and the
difference between them. However, they had some trouble with the activity. I wanted to bring the
activity back for one more week with slight adjustments made. Before doing the bear activity the
42
students will march around to the beat while singing the first verse of the song; their feet doing
one thing while their mouth does another. Next I will show a visual (see in this weeks journals)
that separates the beat from the rhythm, and this will lead into the teddy bear activity.
The visual aspects in this lesson include staff notation, musical symbols, a hoberman
sphere, the promethean board, and teddy bears. Please see the lesson plan on the next page,
followed by in depth descriptions of how each part of the lesson was received.
Lobo Choir: Week 3-Dictating do and

sol; Cres. & Decres.; Beat vs. Rhythm
GRADES 2ND-4TH
APRIL 6, 2015
Materials
Rain Stick
Hoberman Sphere
Scarves
Teddy Bears (8)
Rhythm
I Wont Grow Up
Steady Beat vs.
Rhythm
Tonal
Draw a Bucket of
Water
Give Me a Kite
do and sol
Expression
Listen to the Rain
crescendo/decrescend
o
Piano and forte
Manipulatives
Hoberman Sphere
Rain Stick
Teddy Bears
Movement
Body Solfege
Scarves
Visuals
Rainbows
Slide Show
Warm Up (15)
Draw a Bucket of Water song and game (sol and do). After they play the game once
through, get in a circle and sing while doing body solfege. Ask them to sing do.
Slide down with voice and ask them what that note is (sol). Sing through with
solfege in appropriate spots (one baboon and a silver spoon).
We know where do and sol live on our bodies, but where do they live on the
musical staff? Show notes for one baboon and a silver spoon.

Sing through what we learned last week with hoberman sphere to make sure they
have the words.
Label what were doing with the hoberman sphere as a crescendo and a
decrescendo. Show on board. Add in piano and forte dynamics. Use rainbow
image for messa de voce if needed.
Clouds (10)
Split into three groups.
Sing through what we learned last week, and learn mm. 37-44
with scarves. Each group will have their own imagine to sing.
On the word imagine the group tosses their scarves up in the
air. Everyone will get a turn singing all of the different
imagines.
Give Me a Kite (10)

Keep scarves, and get in a circle. Put scarves at feet and do body solfege in the
beginning of the song. When you get to measure 31 pick up the scarves and let
them be your kite. They can make their kite do whatever they would like, but on
the word go in mm. 40, throw their kite up in the air and follow it down with
their voices dynamically. Ask them what this is (decrescendo).
The first time through, I will sing while they make their kite fly. They will join me in
singing the second, third, and fourth time through.
Heres an easy way

to use text you've
the basis for a new
paragraph,
character, or list
style:
1.
2.
Select the
text, on the
Format
menu, click
Styles and
Formatting,
and then click
New Style.
Youll see all
your style
characteristic
s displayed.
Name your
new style,
check the Add
to Template
box, and then
click OK.
I Wont Grow Up (20)

Put the beat in our feet while Corrin plays along. Ask what our feet are doing (the
beat) and what the words of the song are (the rhythm).
Let them see the visual on the board that shows the beat and rhythm separately.
Have some volunteers come up to the board to point to the rhythm and to the beat.
Try the teddy bear game again, but this time have four teachers in front of four
students instead of four students in front of four students. If they get bored with
the words, try a different verse.
Here Comes Sally (10)

Get with partners, and they stand across from their partner making two lines. They
join hands with their partner. The couple at one end of the line (Teacher and
Teacher assistant or student assistant) will be our leading couple.
Verse 1: Holding hands with their partner, they swing their arms back and forth
Verse 2: Drop hands and both partners take a tiny jump back on beats one and
three, and clap on two and four.
Verse 3: The first partner walks/struts/dances down the line while everyone else
continues to clap on beats two and four.
Verse 4: The second partner walks/struts/dances down the line while everyone
else continues to clap on beats two and four.

Company Name
Street Address
Address 2
Phone
Fax
E-mail
Were on the Web!
Web Address
45
Week Three: Rhythm

Last week we learned the difference between beat and rhythm. The students
understood that the beat was consistently steady throughout the song, while the rhythm was
always changing according to the words we were singing. The exercise that was implemented
last week had some successes, but I wanted to revisit it again this week with more explanation
and new activities.
We started by putting the beat in our feet. The students walked around the room to the
beat and sang I Wont Grow Up. After singing a few phrases, I stopped and asked them what it
is that our feet are doing. The immediate response was the beat! I then asked what the words
we were singing was labeled. Again, the immediate response was the rhythm!
Hearing and seeing that they definitely had this concept down in their minds led me into
showing a visual on the board of the rhythm and the beat combined. I wrote out the rhythm, put
the words underneath, and put heart icons underneath the words. This was to show them that
there were always four hearts, representing the big beats in the measure, in each row. No matter
how many notes we have in a measure, we will always have four hearts in this case. The visuals
are shown below.
46
After showing the visual, I asked for volunteers to come up to the board and point to
either the rhythm or the beat. If I asked them to point to the rhythm, I expected to see their
fingers pointing to the notes. If I asked them to point to the beat, I expected to see their fingers
pointing to the heart icons representing the beat. Since the volunteers had their backs turned, I
asked the rest of the class to point along with them so I could see whether or not their
fingers/arms were moving quickly (to the rhythm) or slowly (to the beat). Both the volunteers
and the class showed excellent understanding of this concept, so we moved on to last weeks
activity hoping to see some improvement there as well.
Last week we had two groups of four students facing each other in two rows. The
remaining students were lined up behind the four students in the front of the line. Each student in
the front rows had a teddy bear. The teddy bears represented the beat. The students in the front of
the rows had a number; one, two, three, or four. Basically, each student in the front rows
represented the first, second, third, or fourth beat. For example, the phrase I wont grow up is
represented by four quarter notes, therefore the students representing beat one were responsible
47
for putting their teddy bear down on the floor on the word I. The student representing beat two
put their teddy bear down on the word wont, and so on and so forth. The visual for this is
shown below.
This week I changed the activity to just four rows of students, and the students faced four
teachers; myself, my two assistants and my accompanist. This way, the students could watch the
teachers do the motion first to get a better sense of what was being asked of them. There was
much more success with this activity after alterations were made. It is a difficult activity to
perform, in that you can never lose focus while you have the teddy bear. While working with the
teddy bears, the students must count constantly in order to know when to put their teddy bears
down on the floor.
I feel that the students understand the difference between beat and rhythm. It has greatly
assisted them to move to the beat, see the beat under the rhythm on the board, and do an activity
where they keep the beat with teddy bears. I want to move on in our next meeting to reading long
phrases of rhythm. As of now, they have never performed a rhythm longer than one measure. We
will perform rhythms in phrases of up to eight measures long in our next session.
48
Week Three: Tonal

For the past two weeks, the students have been learning and understanding tonic and
dominant pitches. They sang the pitches with no kind of label attached during the first week, and
last week was when the label of do and sol was given to them. During the labeling activity,
the students successfully sang from tonic to dominant, singing do and sol. However, the
mistake of singing tonic for both do and sol was made by a few students. Although the
mistake seemed to happen less throughout the duration of rehearsal last week, I still wanted to
revisit the concept this week with the visual of body solfege to reiterate that do was higher in
sound, and on our bodies, than sol.
The activity this week started our rehearsal, but it was also extended throughout the rest
of rehearsal as well. I randomly asked them to sing sol or do during our other activities as a
way to determine whether or not the concept was understood. Last week we started rehearsal
with a game called Draw a Bucket of Water. In this song, the music goes back and forth
between tonic and dominant pitches for an entire phrase. This week, we also began rehearsal
with this activity, but with an added component. After playing the game we formed a circle and
the students were told to follow my movement (the movement being body solfege). Even though
the song includes multiple occurrences of do and sol, I only used body solfege during the
phrase in which the voice goes back and forth between tonic and dominant. The students
followed this beautifully.
After singing through, and following my movements, I pointed to my hips singing the
question what do we call this? on tonic. Most of the students answered do and sang the
correct pitch, but a select few did speak the answer. Regardless, I knew more than eighty percent
of the class knew and understood do, home base, or tonic. After establishing that pointing to
49
our hips was called do, I slid my voice and hands down to my knees at the same time and sang
and what did we call this? on dominant. Again, most of the students sang sol on the correct
note.
We sang the song through again, but this time when getting to the phrase that
incorporates body solfege, the students were to sing solfege instead of the words. Therefore, both
physical solfege and singing solfege was done simultaneously. There was immediate success
with this exercise, making for a perfect segway. The students know and understand where do
and sol live in their bodies and in their voices, but do they know where they live on the musical
staff? Below, I have the first visual I showed the class of where tonic and dominant reside on the
staff. I chose to do the lower dominant pitch first simply because it occurred most often in the
songs we were singing at the time.
The students were already familiar with quarter and eighth notes, so understanding the
rhythm was not a problem. They have not seen tonal exercises such as this visually before in my
classroom. Before singing the excerpt in full, I pointed to do and sol and we sang the pitches
again while I pointed to the notes. I wanted the students to see that do was higher on the
musical staff than sol, just as it has been in our bodies and our voices. I did mention that do
was versatile. I explained that just because we see do in the second space right now, does not
mean that the second space is its permanent home. But, I did mention that if do were in some
other space, sol would always be two lines below it. We did not delve too far into this kind of
50
explanation, but it was mentioned. We sang through the two measure phrase while I pointed to
the notes. The next step was to show them the actual music to the song. It is shown below.
Later on in the rehearsal, when singing Give Me a Kite, the concept of tonic and
dominant was revisited. The main approach I am taking with the teaching of this song is body
solfege, therefore, we will always have practice with this song as well as any other additional
activities done.
51
Week Three: Expression
For the past two weeks the students have been demonstrating dynamic contrasts with
their voices, and have also shown the contrast with their bodies and a hoberman sphere. This
week I labeled the terms crescendo and decrescendo, piano and forte, and showed what these
looked like as symbols in music.
I started this exercise by asking if anyone knew the fancy term for when we get louder
with our voices. The first student that answered, answered crescendo. On the board, I had the
words of the phrase written out with a crescendo underneath. We brainstormed a few things that
the crescendo reminded us of, such as an alligator mouth, a pacman mouth, or a stretched out
greater or less than symbol in math.
After performing the phrase, and making our voices grow with the crescendo, the next
phrase involved a decrescendo. I had the symbol underneath the next phrase and asked what they
thought it was. They saw that it was a backwards crescendo, and they knew that it meant for their
voices to get softer. However, none of them knew the official name. One of my assistants labeled
it for us, and we all echoed decrescendo back to her. We then performed the entire phrase with
both the crescendo and decrescendo in the appropriate places.
I had the dynamic markings of forte and piano up in the corners of the board while we
were labeling crescendo and decrescendo. After performing the phrase a few times, I asked the
students if anyone knew the term in music that we use for singing quietly. The hint that was
given to them was that the symbol for this term was somewhere on the board. We confirmed that
the musical term for singing quietly was called piano, and it was to go at the beginning of the
crescendo. They quickly labeled the term forte as the term for singing loudly in music, and it was
52
put at the end of the crescendo. Both piano and forte symbols were put on the decrescendo in
reverse order as well. The visual is shown below.
Because they seemed to be so knowledgeable about crescendos and decrescendos, I

wanted to give them a challenge. I started to introduce messa de voce by using the symbol of a
rainbow. Another visual we used, in which the students seemed to respond to better was shaping
their hands as if they were holding a ball. On the messa de voce their ball grew bigger in their
hands, and then deflated down to the small original ball. The students definitely understood this
concept, but it will be a few weeks before they can label messa de voce by themselves; they still
need some guidance with the pronunciation of the phrase. The visual is shown below for messa
de voce.
53
Throughout the rest of the rehearsal, if our voices were ever growing or decaying
dynamically, I would ask the students what the fancy term was called for what we are doing
with our voices. They answered correctly each time. This gives me confidence that they are
ready to move on in learning another expressive quality in music. During our next meeting we
will be learning about staccato markings.
54
Week Four
Introduction: Week Four
Week fours lesson is full of new concepts. The three main intensions of this lesson is to
learn and understand where the upper dominant pitch lives in our voices, bodies, and musical
staff, the function of half notes, and the function of legato and staccato singing in music that they
hear and are learning. We will start the class with a singing game called Love Somebody. The
majority of the songs pitches included upper and lower dominant and tonic, making it easy to
include the body solfege that we had learned thus far.
I will use this song, Love Somebody to introduce high sol. We will incorporate body
solfege while singing it, and then transfer the pitches onto the musical staff. After putting the
notes that we know on the staff we will sing through the song by reading the notes on the board.
Rhythmically, we will be learning the function of a half note this week. After learning its
function in music, we will clap a few short examples together in order to solidify our
understanding as a group. Finally, I will ask them to clap an eight measure rhythm that I will
write on the board. So far they have only read one measure rhythmic phrases at a time, but I
believe they are excelling at a much faster rate. I will give them a simple eight measure phrase to
read as a class. The goal is for the students to read the rhythm without my pointing at every note.
The song used in the beginning of class Love Somebody, will be used to teach the two
expressive qualities, staccato and legato. I will be using visual metaphors in order to get the
students to use their voices in certain ways. The metaphors for singing legato will be sing like
you are moving through a room of jello, and sing as if you have a big ball of bubble gum in
your hands and you are pulling it in different directions at the beginning of each phrase. The
55
metaphor I will be using for staccato singing will be sing as if you are a popcorn kernel
popping. After describing the sounds that they created with their voices, I will introduce the
musical terms.
The visual aspects in this lesson include staff notation, body solfege, the promethean
board, and visual metaphors. Please see the lesson plan on the next page, followed by in depth
descriptions of how each part of the lesson was received.
Lobo Choir: Week 4-High sol;

Half Notes; Legato and Staccato
GRADES 2ND-4TH
APRIL 6, 2015
Materials
Warm Up (5)
Rhythm
Half notes
Reading longer
rhythms
Love Somebody game. I will teach the students the song by rote while keeping a
steady beat on their laps. After they learn the song, I will walk around the outside
of the circle and sing with them. The student that I land behind by the end of the
song will be the next person to walk around the outside of the circle. They can
choose to sing by themselves or with the group.
Tonal
Tonal (8)
Introduce high sol

label and show on staff
After they have learned the song Love Somebody, as the students are walking
around the outside of the circle we will do some body solfege as they sing; no
labeling yet, just doing.
Expression
Legato and staccato
Introduce high sol and compare it to the sol we already know; showing the body
solfege and music from last week, and showing the new music from this week.
Manipulatives
See how they do with reading a line of music.
Rhythm (10)
Movement
Body solfege
Moving to sound
Walking to the beat
Metaphors
Singing like youre
moving through jello
Singing like youre a
piece of popcorn
popping
Introduce half notes, and clap a few examples together.

Name all of the notes that weve learned so far.
Clap long rhythm on the board, and possibly try to figure out
what song the rhythm is from.
Expression (10)
Go back to the song Love Somebody, and ask them to sing it as if they were
swimming through jello.
Visuals
Introduce the musical term (legato) of how we were just singing the song.
Rhythms
Solfege
Now sing the song like each note is a piece of popcorn popping! Talk about how
short of a sound popping makes, and thats how short each note needs to be.
Introduce the musical term (staccato) of how we were just singing the song.
Combine the two. Sing legato for love somebody, and staccato for yes I do.
Continue this pattern for the rest of the song.
Heres an easy way

to use text you've
the basis for a new
paragraph,
character, or list
style:
1.
Select the
text, on the
Format
menu, click
Styles and
Formatting,
and then click
New Style.
Youll see all
your style
characteristic
s displayed.
2.
Name your
new style,
check the Add
to Template
box, and then
click OK.
Company Name
Street Address
Address 2
Phone
Fax
E-mail
Were on the Web!
Web Address

58
Week Four: Rhythm
For the past two weeks, my students have been practicing the difference between beat
and rhythm. I could see that they understood the concept and were ready to move on to more
difficult rhythmic activities. I would like to make a note that we had limited time this week to
complete the activities, therefore, I designed each activity to last between six and eight minutes.
During each activity, I made sure to note whether the students needed more time on the concept
in order to better comprehend. During the rhythm activity, it was clear that they were ready to
move on to a more difficult activity.
This week I introduced half notes to the group. I would say about half of the group
already knew the name and function of a half note before my introduction. We clapped a few
examples together. We clapped the half notes by clapping on the beat on which they began, and
then kept our hands cupped together moving them through space to represent the held second
beat. The students clapped several examples correctly, showing me that they were ready to move
on.
The next step was to read an extensive rhythm that involved more than two measures.
The rhythm I used was the rhythm from one of our songs Draw a Bucket of Water. This
rhythm was eight measures long and included quarter notes, eighth notes, and half notes; there
were no rests.
The first thing that was mentioned was the function of the lines (bar lines that divided up
the measures) that I drew within the rhythm. We came to a consensus that the lines organized the
measures for us. I also asked them how many beats were in each of these particular measures.
They quickly understood that there were four beats in each measure, therefore, after four beats
were sounded, there needed to be a bar line to create another measure.
59
The first time reading through the rhythm, I pointed to every note that the students
clapped. There were a few that clapped on the second and fourth beats in the measures that had
the half notes, but those mistakes were fixed by the end of the eight measure phrase.
By the second read through I noticed that they were doing very well, and I wanted to see
how they did without my pointing to the notes. They finished the second half of the rhythm with
no difficulty at all.
On the last read through I did not point to the notes at all. I wanted to see how well they
could follow and listen to one another to stay together as a group. I was blown away. I think they
are more than ready to continue with harder rhythmic activities that involve rests and possibly a
class composition.
60
Week Four: Tonal
For the past couple of weeks we have been exploring tonic and dominant pitches. We
have named those pitches do and sol. For this weeks lesson, I wanted to introduce the higher
sol, as we had previously learned the lower sol leading to tonic last week. I would like to
make a note that we had limited time this week to complete the activities, therefore, I designed
each activity to last between six and eight minutes. During each activity, I made sure to note
whether the students needed more time on the concept in order to better comprehend. During the
tonal activity, it was clear that they were ready to move on to a more difficult activity.
The tonal activity involved a song called Love Somebody. I changed some of the notes
in the beginning of the song to better assist in our activity. Usually, the first four notes of the
song are do, mi, sol, sol, but I changed the notes to do, do, sol, sol. This change was made to
make the comparison of the song from last week to this week much easier. The tonal example
last week was also do, do, sol, sol, but with the lower sol. I wanted to have the same labels,
but with different sounds to better differentiate the two sols.
We started by playing a simple game with the song. We sat in a circle, while someone
walked around the outside of the circle singing the song by themselves or with the group (most
of them chose to sing with the group). The song is shown below.
61
While they were singing the song, I did simple body solfege (touching my head for sol, and
touching my hips for do). After doing the game a few times, I noticed that I had some of the
students doing the body solfege with me. We labeled do and low sol as we had done in the
previous weeks, but then I asked them what they thought we might label the note that I sang
when I was touching my head. I got a variety of answers, letting me know that they were unsure.
As soon as I gave them the hint of we have already used this name before, a hand flew up and
labeled the new note sol.
Can we have two sols, I asked? I was impressed with their positive answer. Yes!
We discussed how one sol was higher than the other, but yet they had the same name and a
similar sound. To practice, we went back and forth between the three notes; high sol, do, and
low sol. They did this exercise very well. In past weeks, they were having difficulty finding
low sol at times. This week, they had no trouble at all with any of the notes.
I wanted them to visually see the comparison between last weeks song and this weeks
song (see below), so I put two similar measures side by side to show them the visual difference
in the music. They could hear the tonal difference, one sol being higher than the other, but
seeing it on the musical staff helped to clarify.
Our last step in this activity was to sing the song all the way through, but instead of
singing the words, I asked them to sing the first four notes on their solfege syllable. So instead of
62
singing love somebody, yes, I do, they sang do, do, sol, sol, yes, I do. The visual is shown
below.
I was extremely impressed with how quickly they grasped the higher dominant concept. I
look forward to seeing how far these students go in the next four weeks, as they have already
surpassed my expectations thus far.
63
Week Four: Expression
This week for our expressive activity we learned the meaning of legato and staccato. At
the beginning of the class, we learned a song called Love Somebody, and we used this song to
demonstrate the difference between legato and staccato. The visual I used for this activity was a
metaphorical visual. I used words to paint a picture in their minds of what I wanted their voices
to sound like as they sang. I would like to make a note that we had limited time this week to
complete the activities, therefore, I designed each activity to last between six and eight minutes.
During each activity, I made sure to note whether the students needed more time on the concept
in order to better comprehend. During the expressive activity, it was clear that they were ready to
move on to a more difficult activity.
I did not label the terms right away. I asked the students to sing the song as if they were
walking through a room full of jello. As they sang, I noticed that they slowed the tempo down,
but also connected the sound in a smooth manner. When we stopped singing, I asked them what
they did with their voices to make it seem like they were walking through a room of jello. Some
of the answers were more entertaining than accurate. Some students thought they needed to
wobble their voices to mimic the way jello wobbles when it is in a bowl or on a plate. They did
not quite understand that they themselves were supposed to move through the jello, not watch it
move. One student mentioned that they slowed it down a little bit. I took this bit of confusion
as a need for another example.
My next example of how to sing the song dealt with bubble gum. I asked the students to
pretend that they had a huge wad a bubble gum in their hand (I was afraid they might not know
what taffy was at this point) and for each phrase that we sang, they were going to pull that bubble
gum in a different direction. This visual metaphor made their sound much more consistent. We
64
labeled this consistent flowing sound legato. One student already knew the term, and labeled it
for the group.
The next time we sang the song Love Somebody, I asked the students to sing it as if
they were popcorn kernels. This visual metaphor was to get them singing staccato. Their singing
was accurate for this exercise, and one student even said that they envisioned a dotted line as she
was singing.
Before labeling the term, I put the words up on the board and put staccato markings
underneath each syllable to show them the symbol. It is shown below. I did not show the
markings under standard notation.
It is clear that the students understood the concept of legato and staccato. We will move
on next week to a more difficult concept of expression.
65
Week Five
Introduction: Week Five
Week five marks the half way point for this project. Up to this point, the students have
shown excellent growth and understanding of everything that has been given to them. This week
involves more introductions or new concepts, but also experiments with concepts they have
already learned. The three main intensions of this lesson is to learn and understand where mi
and re live in our voices, bodies, and musical staff, to create rhythms with the notes we have
learned in previous weeks, and to understand the meaning of ritardando when it occurs in music
they hear and are learning. We will start with a singing game called Thats a Mighty Pretty
Motion. This will get all of the notes in their head that we will be labeling with our solfege
syllables later on in the lesson.
The solfege syllables they will be learning in this lesson are mi and re. They will be
labeling these notes on the staff as they have done for the other notes they have learned, but this
week I am changing the location of the tonic pitch. We had talked about in weeks prior that do
can be anywhere on the staff, and once we find it, that is how we determine where the other
notes live. I gave them this challenge because of their superior work in previous weeks.
For our rhythm section this week, I am having them compose rhythms out of all of the
notes we have learned thus far. I will be introducing a half rest that goes along with the half note
we learned last week. I will split the class into small groups and each group will compose
rhythms to clap. After some time alone in the groups, I will ask that each group compose two
measures to be a part of a class rhythm. This way, they are reading longer phrases, and each
others compositions. This week will also be the first week they will clap and say rhythms at the
66
same time. They will use ta for quarter notes, ti-ti for eighth notes, and hold out ta for two
beats for half notes.
I will be introducing ritardando at the end of class with the song Listen to the Rain.
One of the phrases we will be learning this week ends with a ritardando. I will have the students
keep a steady beat on their laps while I sing the phrase, and by the end of the phrase their beat
should be faster than my singing.
The visual aspects in this lesson include staff notation, body solfege, the promethean
board, rhythm cards and tooth picks (used as bar lines in their compositions), and body
movement. Please see the lesson plan on the next page, followed by in depth descriptions of how
each part of the lesson was received.
Lobo Choir: Week 5-Mi & Re;

Composition; Ritardando
GRADES 2ND-4TH
APRIL 6, 2015
Materials
Rhythm bags
Puff the Magic Dragon
Rhythm
Composition
Tonal
Warm Up (10)
Thats a Mighty Pretty Motion game. The students stand in a large circle with hands
unjoined with one student in the center. At the beginning of the song the student in
the middle does a dance motion as the class sings thats a mighty pretty motion,
dee,di, dee. The rest of the students clap on beats two and four while singing the
song. On the last phrase, rise, sugar, rise! the student in the middle picks another
student to come in the middle to do a dance move.
Mi and sol
Introducing mi and re (12)
Expression
As I did last week during our game, I will be doing the body solfege while the
students sing the song and play the game. We will label mi and sol and see where it
lives on the musical staff.
Ritardando
Manipulatives
Rhythm bags
Movement
Body solfege
Motions to lyrics
Steady beat
Metaphors
This weeks do is in a different place. Make a note of that and show them what
the song would look like if we used the do from last week.
Make a few examples on the board and sing through them together.
I Wont Grow Up (8)

Learn mm. 25-32 with simple motions. Make a note that one
of the notes is staccato. Sing from beginning to the end of
page six.
Visuals
Musical staff
Rhythm cards
Word reminders
Steady beat
Rhythm (12)
Get into groups of three. These groups will have cut outs of notes that they can
arrange in any way they please. Give them a few minutes to compose a few
rhythms with their groups and perform them with their groups.
Have them leave their compositions on the ground and they will rotate to another
groups composition and sight read them. Rotate a few times.
I will be going around hearing the groups clapping the rhythms together to assess
how well they are doing with the activity. I will also give the opportunity for some
groups to perform rhythms for the entire class if they wish.
Heres an easy way

to use text you've
the basis for a new
paragraph,
character, or list
style:
1.
2.
Select the
text, on the
Format
menu, click
Styles and
Formatting,
and then click
New Style.
Youll see all
your style
characteristic
s displayed.
Name your
new style,
check the Add
to Template
box, and then
click OK.
Company Name
Street Address
Address 2
Phone
Fax
E-mail
Were on the Web!
Web Address
Give Me a Kite (10)

Read Puff the Magic Dragon and sing mm. 43-46 after a few page turns.
Clouds (15)
Split the choir into two groups to learn mm. 49-63. Go phrase by phrase teaching
what group will be saying what words. Piece as much together as they can retain.
This is the hardest section of the piece, therefore, if it needs more than a week, well
rehearse it next week as well.

Teach mm. 16-26. Have them keep a steady beat on their laps as I sing the few
phrases. Have them notice whats happening at the end of the phrase (rit.)
Show them what this would look like in music. Make sure they have the words
down, and sing from the beginning to the end of page six.

69
Week Five: Rhythm
Last week marked the halfway point for this particular study with the students of Lobo
Choir, and up until last week they had successfully completed everything that was presented to
them. This week, I wanted to see how far they could be pushed in their rhythmic knowledge. For
the past four weeks, the students have been successfully clapping rhythms up to eight measures
in length. My curve ball for the week was asking them to clap and say the rhythms at the same
time. The syllable that was used for quarter notes was ta, and ti-ti was used for eighth notes.
There was one new rhythmic notation presented to the students this week; a half rest. We
clapped a few rhythmic examples together, including some examples with half rests. The
majority of the class clapped all of the rhythms correctly, as they had been doing in previous
weeks. When presenting the words that were going to be associated with quarter and eighth
notes, a select few students said that the syllables we were using were the ones they were using
in their classrooms at school. However, for the majority of the class, I believe this was new
information.
To begin, we said the rhythm instead of saying and clapping (even though some students
said and clapped the rhythm at the same time). After a few repetitions everyone was on the same
page. The main activity for the day was to start composing their own rhythms. The class was
split into six groups with each group having about three students. Each group was given a zip
lock bag that included quarter, eighth and half notes, quarter and half rests, and toothpicks to
represent bar lines.
They were given five minutes to compose different rhythms while I came around to each
group to clap and say the rhythms with the students. During the last minute, I asked each group
to compose two measures, and practice them really well. Once everyone had their two measures,
70
we began to combine them into a class composition. This ended up being twelve measures long,
almost twice as long as any rhythm they had ever read. They struggled through some parts, but I
was impressed with how we they did with the exercise overall.
What I was looking for with the saying of the syllables was how they dealt with the
preparation of saying the rhythm. Before they can say the rhythm, they have to make time to
breathe. This is not only a preparation skill, but a timing skill as well. I noticed that some
students had trouble with this timing skill when a measure began with a half rest and ended in
quarter or eighth notes. In order to come in on time, they needed to breathe on beat two to come
in on beat three. The student beside me was extremely focused, but when it came to a measure
such as the previous, her hands clapped on beat three, but her voice came in a little after beat
three saying ta.
This idea of the breathing preparation is something I want to continue practicing next
week. I am also interested to see if I can give them some rhythms of songs we have been singing
to see if they can recognize them from just the rhythm itself.
71
Week Five: Tonal
them. This week, I wanted to see how far they could be pushed in their tonal knowledge. They
showed comprehension in tonic and dominant pitches; where they were located on the staff and
their bodies (body solfege), and accurate intonation. The introduction of the second and third
scale degree (re and mi) was introduced today through a game called Thats A Mighty Pretty
Motion. I altered some notes of the song from its original state in order to get all of the scale
degrees that we have learned thus far.
We played the game for a few rounds, and by the last round I was doing body solfege for
the notes that were being sung. The students recognized the movements, and began to follow.
After the game and song had ended, we sang through the scale degrees that we had learned from
previous weeks while doing the body solfege simultaneously. The third scale degree, mi, was
designated to the shoulders, while the second scale degree, re, was designated to the bottom of
the rib cage. After singing through a few tonic and dominant pitches, I placed my hands on my
shoulders and asked what they thought this might be called. I immediately got the answer mi,
but it was being sung on tonic. I recognized the correct answer from the student, but assisted
them by singing the correct pitch for the third scale degree.
From there we sang and did the body solfege for all the pitches we had learned thus far.
They were doing well with the intonations of the pitches. I took the same approach in
introducing re in that after singing through a few patterns of pitches we knew, I put my hands
on the bottom of my rib cage and asked if they might know the name of this note. Surprisingly,
the first answer I got was fa, which will be introduced in two weeks. We figured out that the
72
name was re and proceeded with more patterns of all the notes combined, along with their body
solfege counterparts. I would like to make a note that they did have more trouble with the second
scale degree than any other scale degree they have learned thus far.
The next step was to transfer from the visual cue of the body solfege to the visual cue of
musical notation on the staff. We had learned in previous weeks that do could move around on
the staff; it did not have a permanent home. The visual is shown below.
I explained to them that the d on the line told us where do was located, and from there we
could find re and mi. They seem to grasp this concept well. It was here that I decided to throw
in a difficult curveball to see how well they grasped the concept of the first, second, and third
scale degree.
We sang the song that we had learned at the beginning of class once more, and focused
on the first three notes of the song (mi, re, and do). I wanted to see if they recognized the
difference in sound, and where they belonged in the song we were singing. The visual they were
given was a blank staff with a d showing them where the tonic pitch was located. This is shown
below.
73
The students dragged the note at the top of the screen down to where they thought it belonged on
the staff. One student at a time came up to put one note in place. I was impressed that they
understood that the first three notes of the song were mi, re, and do. My next challenge was
to see if they could put the notes on the staff if I moved the do to a different place (the location
it was in for the previous two weeks). I placed the d icon on the second space of the staff, and
had volunteers come up to write out the same melody, but in a different location. Again, I was
surprised and proud that this exercise was also done correctly. It is shown below.
The students were successful in the understanding of solfege, and where notes were to be
placed on the staff. I will say that they were confused when I gave them the tonal exercise below.
I purposefully did not put any letters below the notes guiding their solfege names. I wanted to see
how much they could take in successfully. The first measure was not a problem. I even heard
someone in the background say are you sleeping; recognizing that those pitches began the song
Are You Sleeping. However, the second measure was more of a challenge. They sang the
syllables do, mi, and sol, but sang the pitches do, re, mi. The most challenging part of
this exercise was getting our voices up to the third scale degree from tonic. When we
74
incorporated the body solfege, this helped them place the note. They see it visually on the staff
that the note is higher, but when they add the kinesthetic component it helps to better solidify the
understanding.
I want to continue with the singing from staff notation next week. We will not add the
fourth scale degree until week seven.
75
Week Five: Expression
them. This week I presented the students with ritardando, and it was positively received and
understood by all.
One of the songs that we are currently learning, Listen to the Rain, was used as my
example. I asked the students to keep a steady beat with me on their laps as I sang a few phrases
from the song. While singing the last few measures, I slowed down abruptly in order for them to
notice the change.
There is one very talented young lady in the choir that has had private musical instruction
previous to being in the choir. She has helped me label many things in previous weeks, but I
asked for other students to help me at this particular point in order to better understand where the
class stood in their understanding of this expressive tool. I prompted the class that I was looking
for a word that started with the letter r. One of the first answers given was rest. I can see the
reasoning for this answer, and I told the student that I could understand where they were coming
from, but during a rest we needed to be completely silent, and we were not being completely
silent when we slowed down our tempo.
I ended up letting the little girl who has had private musical instruction give us the
answer to the question. Now that they have a few expressive vocabulary words to their disposal,
I would like to make sure that everything has digested well and concepts are generally
understood.
For next weeks activity, I would like to see if they can recognize expressive qualities in
not only their music that they are presently singing, but in other music as well.
76
Week Six
Introduction: Week Six
Week sixs lesson plan involved some individual assessment. Up to this point the
students have been assessed as a group, and have performed very well, but hearing them
individually will tell me more about where to go in the final two weeks of the project. The three
main intentions of this lesson is to define and understand all of the expressive terms we have
learned thus far, read rhythms individually, and begin to compose with the notes we have learned
(do, re, mi, high sol, low sol).
For the rhythm activity, there will be a tic-tac-toe board set up on the floor with colored
papers in each square. On the opposite side of each colored paper will be a rhythm the students
will clap and say when it is their turn. This will be the first time the students have ever performed
a rhythm by themselves.
For the tonal exercise in this weeks lesson, I will tape down two measures worth of a
treble staff. We will have colored dots representing the notes on the staff. This activity will give
the students a colorful visual for musical notation, and it will also be the first time they will be
reading notes that they have not sung in a song prior to the activity. I will also allow a few
volunteers at the end to compose a melody for the class to sing.
For the expression activity I will have all of the expressive terms up on the board in a
random order, along with one new word, accelerando. As they begin to define the terms on the
board I will put the terms that oppose each other together, showing the students that each term
has an opposite term attached to it (forte and piano, loud and soft).
77
The visual aspects in this lesson include the promethean board, rhythm cards in a tic-tactoe game setting, and colorful staff notation. Please see the lesson plan on the next page,
followed by in depth descriptions of how each part of the lesson was received.
Lobo Choir: Week 6-Defining

Expression; Rhythm Reading;
Tonal Reading
GRADES 2ND-4TH
APRIL 6, 2015
Materials
Tic-tac-toe rhythms
Tape
Xs and Os
Colored dots
Bean bags
Rhythm
Tic-tac-toe
Warm Up (8)
Charlie Over the Ocean game. Students stand in a circle holding hands. There is
one child outside of the circle. The entire circle rotates one direction while the
outside child skips around the opposite direction. On the words you cant catch
me the outside child taps someone in the circle, the outside circle stops moving,
and the child that was tapped has to run to tag the child that tapped them. If they
catch them, the child that was tapped is now the one walking on the outside of the
circle.
Tonal
Reading and
composing
Learn any words they did not remember from last week in mm. 16-26. A crescendo
and decrescendo will be written under the pictures that represent the words. Ask
them for the names of the symbols, and the dynamic names in which we start and
end crescendos and decrescendos (piano and forte).
Expression
Recognizing expressive
qualities we have
learned
Manipulatives
Bean bags
Expression (10)
I will have all of the terms we have learned thus far mixed up
on the board. They will choose one term at a time to define. I
want them to see that each term has an opposite term
attached to it. Define all terms.
Movement
Moving to music
Tossing bean bags
Metaphors
Visuals
Staff
Promethean board
Tic-tac-toe rhythms
Clouds (10)
Get into our two groups to review what we went over last week. Add mm. 55 & 56.
Sing from the beginning to as far as they can go.
Heres an easy way

to use text you've
the basis for a new
paragraph,
character, or list
style:
1.
2.
Select the
text, on the
Format
menu, click
Styles and
Formatting,
and then click
New Style.
Youll see all
your style
characteristic
s displayed.
Name your
new style,
check the Add
to Template
box, and then
click OK.
Give Me a Kite (7)

Learn second verse with body solfege and motions.
Rhythm Tic-Tac-Toe (10)

I will draw out a tic-tac-toe board on the floor with tape. There will be rhythms on
cards, face down. The class will be split into two teams. Each team will take turns
turning over the cards on the board and reading and clapping the rhythms. This
way, I can hear each individual student clap and say rhythms. The notes that will be
used are quarter, eighth, and half notes, and quarter and half rests. If one team
gets the rhythm wrong, the other team can try to steal it.
I Wont Grow Up (10)

Teach the words to the second verse. We will set up similarly to how we were when
we used the teddy bears. Four teachers will be facing a row of four students (the
rest of the students will be in line behind the front four). The teachers will toss a
bean bag to the student in front of them representing the echo that they will be
singing. After the students echo what the teachers sang, they will throw the bean
bag back to the teacher. During the transition of the lines, I will be singing mm. 4148. The students will join me as they learn the words.
Tonal (2)
Tape a staff down on the floor. Have cut out letters d, r, m,
s, s, I will compose the first few melodies and have the
students to body solfege to think about the melody before
singing it. We will not exceed two measures. I will have some
students compose at the end.
Shalom (2)
Sing good bye.
Company Name
Street Address
Address 2
Phone
Fax
E-mail
Were on the Web!
Web Address
80
Week Six: Rhythm
The students of Lobo Choir have been conquering each rhythmic activity that has been
presented to them. Last week we did some composing in groups and learned to say and clap the
rhythms at the same time. I learned that it was a struggle for some to clap and say the rhythms,
most likely because they were not used to making time for the breath preparation in order to
make sound. Having to prepare in two ways, getting your hands ready to clap and taking a breath
in order to speak, is a lot to think about while learning a new concept such as rhythmic notation.
This week I wanted to hear individuals clap and say rhythms in order to better assess them
individually. I was impressed and shocked at what resulted from the activity.
The activity this week was a rhythmic tic-tac-toe game. I made a tic-tac-toe board on the
ground with painters tape, and placed nine pieces of square shaped paper face down on the
board.
The class was split into two groups, Xs and Os. One person at a time from each group came up
and flipped a card over to reveal a rhythm on the other side. The rhythms varied in length of one
to two measures, and included quarter, eighth, and half notes, and quarter and half rests.
81
Before we began the game, I turned over a few cards so we could practice as a class.
Also, there were a few people that were absent last week and needed to learn the function of a
half rest. The group practicing went well, so I was curious to see how students were going to do
individually.
As stated above, the main point to this exercise was to be able to assess the students
individually. To my surprise, some of the students I was worried about clapped and said the
rhythms extremely well, and a couple others had a difficult time with the activity. It was very
helpful to be able to hear each individual clap and say rhythms. It has helped me to identify who
to keep an eye on, and who to help feel successful in their music making, as it is difficult to feel
successful when one is struggling to understand basic concepts.
In the last two weeks that I have for this project I would like to continue hearing the
students on an individual basis. There was a high positive response from the tic-tac-toe game,
therefore, I will be bringing it back the final week as our last rhythm project together.
Next week, I would like to introduce to them one more difficult rhythmic challenge;
syncopation. They have unknowingly sung this pattern in songs in previous meetings. Next week
I will read a book with a repeated phrase that reads as a syncopated pattern syn-co-pa, an
eighth note followed by a quarter note, followed by another eighth note. The syncopated repeated
phrase should help the students internalize the rhythm and better understand it in context with
other rhythms.
I am not expecting the entire class to perfectly perform all of the rhythms we have
learned by the end of our eight week project. There are many talented children in this choir, and I
believe they are up to the challenge. It will be quite the challenge for some of the students, one
that some might not be able to overcome in the short eight week time frame, but I would not give
82
them the challenge if I did not believe they could not handle it. These second, third, and fourth
graders have shown tremendous growth in just six short weeks, and I believe one more push will
be a healthy final challenge.
83
Week Six: Tonal
Understanding tonal concepts is a difficult task for students. I was impressed with the
Lobo Choir the first week when they could sing the tonic pitch as I sang other pitches. From
there they have grown to know and understand tonic and dominant, along with the second and
third scale degrees. Beginning with body solfege before introducing the solfege names helped
this group tremendously. The body solfege gave them a kinesthetic sense of where the pitches
were in relation to one another.
For this weeks activity, I made a large staff on the floor with painters tape and used
colored circles as notes. Each color represented a scale degree. The staff was two measures long
and was in common time.
The first measures melody was made up of do, re, mi, and sol. Before performing
it, we practiced in our heads while we did the body solfege. I sang do so the students could
have that note in their head. I wanted them to audiate the pitches before they sang them out loud.
By doing the body solfege and audiating at the same time, this made the performance of the
pitches more accurate.
84
For the second measure, I had a few volunteers come up and compose the last four beats
to complete our two measure phrase. The first student gave us all a challenge.
The students had an extremely difficult time going from high sol to low sol. This was to be
expected. To my surprise, the first time they sang the melody they sang from low sol to re
correct. However, the more we sang the melody, the more mistakes they made towards the end
of the melody. This could be from multiple factors, such as it was the last activity of the day, or
they heard me say that I was impressed that they sang such a difficult melody.
The second student composed an easier second measure that the class could better handle.
The class did a much better job with this two measure melody. Skips and leaps are difficult even
for the older musicians. I myself had to think about the leap from low sol to re in the previous
85
melody. Again, the students audiated the melody in their heads while doing the body solfege,
and this resulted in a successful reading. We sang each melody two to three times to better
perfect it during each repetition.
I will be doing this activity again in the last two weeks of this project. I believe the
combination of the body solfege, the colors of the notes, and singing together created a better
understanding for some students. Next week I would like to give them one more challenge by
introducing the fourth scale degree, fa. This will complete a five note scale, and it will allow us
to sing one of our songs completely on solfege syllables.
I am not expecting the entire class to perfectly perform all of the melodies given to them
by the end of our eight week project. There are many talented children in this choir, and I truly
believe they are up to the challenge. It will be quite a challenge for some of the students, one that
some might not be able to overcome in the short eight week time frame, but I would not give
them the challenge if I did not believe they could not handle it. These second, third, and fourth
graders have shown tremendous growth in just six short weeks, and I believe one more push will
be a healthy final challenge.
86
Week Six: Expression
The students of the Lobo Choir have learned eight expressive terms so far with this week
being the introduction of the eighth term. The terms are piano, forte, staccato, legato, crescendo,
decrescendo, ritardando and accelerando. In order to learn these terms, we have used multiple
visual activities to strengthen our understanding of the terms. Visuals such as movement,
manipulatives, pictures, and musical symbols have been useful to the students while learning
these expressive musical qualities.
This week I took all of the words that they have learned and scrambled them up on the
board. We took a few seconds to look at all of the words and see which ones we recognized, and
which ones were still confusing. I gave the students a hint that each word had an opposite. We
talked about what opposites were to make sure everyone was understood.
I asked for a volunteer to pick any word on the board and tell me its meaning. The first
word to be defined was piano. Nearly the entire class knew the meaning of this word, therefore,
it did not take long to figure out its opposite, forte.
Staccato was the next word to be defined. I found it amusing that their definition of this
word was you make your voice sound like popcorn! This was the metaphor that I used when
introducing the term. I asked them to sing as if they were popcorn popping. They understood that
the sound of a popcorn kernel was extremely short, therefore, they needed to make their voices
imitate this sound. The next step was to figure out the opposite of staccato. The opposite of short
is long. I could see their confused faces wondering, do we have a word that means to sing long?
Legato! We sang a phrase from our song Listen to the Rain as an example of legato singing to
better understand the concept.
87
The next set of words was crescendo and decrescendo. They are the most familiar with
these words along with piano and forte, simply because we have used these the most in the past
few weeks. I also had the symbols up on the board while we were rehearsing one of our other
songs, and we had labeled them yet again.
Last but not least, we were left with the words ritardando and accelerando. Last week we
learned ritardando, but there were a few students that were absent and unaware of the words
meaning. A student from last week reminded us of the word and its meaning. We then sang an
example from of the songs we are currently singing to better understand the concept. Then came
time for accelerando. No one in the class had heard of this term before that rehearsal. They easily
figured out its meaning, as its being the opposite of slowing down (ritardando). After we
confirmed its meaning of speeding up I asked them to listen to a song and move around to what
they heard. When they heard the song speeding up, I wanted them to run around, or start
moving their bodies to a faster tempo to imitate the accelerando. We moved around to Edward
Griegs Hall of the Mountain King. They did very well with this activity.
For these last two weeks of this project. I want them to be able to move around to these
different techniques of music. I want to see if they recognize the sounds, now that they knew
each definition well. After they have mastered the listening aspect, I want to see if they are able
to recreate each technique with their voices, and recognize the techniques in other music.
I am extremely proud of this group. They have taken in a lot of information in just six
short weeks. I am anxious to see how well they do in the last two weeks of our project together.
88
Week Seven
Introduction: Week Seven
Week sevens lesson plan was the final week for introducing a new concept to the
students. They have done extremely well with everything that has been given to them, and this
week was the final challenge. The three main intentions for this weeks lesson were to introduce
syncopation, complete the five note scale by introducing the fourth scale degree, fa, and seeing if
they could recognize expressive qualities in songs they have never heard before.
I will be reading the book Rap-a-tap Tap to the students to introduce a syncopated
rhythm. They will chant the phrase Rap-a-tap tap. Think of that! during every page turn (see
syncopated rhythm in this weeks journals). We will then try reading some different syncopated
rhythms.
We will be completing our five note scale this week by learning the fourth scale degree,
fa. I have made up a little tune to introduce this new scale degree. The students will listen to me
sing the song, and then will write out the solfege syllables they hear on the promethean board.
The words to the song they will be dictating are solfege syllables, so all I am looking for in this
exercise is their understanding on how we write notes on the musical staff. We will also try
reading a few measures that I will compose on the spot.
Our last exercise will be listening to classical music examples that bring out certain
expressive characteristics. The examples that I chose express certain expressions that drastically
stand out. Most of the examples are as short as 15 seconds long, while the longest example is a
minute and 40 seconds long. The longer examples are meant to challenge the students to keep
89
attentive while listening. The students will be split up into four groups, and will be given flash
cards to hold up for their answers to the listening examples.
The visual aspects in this lesson include the book Rap-a-tap Tap, the promethean
board, and expression flash cards. Please see the lesson plan on the next page, followed by in
depth descriptions of how each part of the lesson was received.
Lobo Choir: Week 7-Syncopation;

Fa; Hearing Expression
GRADES 2ND-4TH
APRIL 6, 2015
Materials
Rap-a-tap Tap
Rhythm
Warm Up (8)
Charlie Over the Ocean game. They really enjoyed this last week, and it has most
of the solfege syllables that weve learned.
Sync-o-pa rhythm
Clouds (15)
Tonal
Review what we learned two weeks ago in groups. Add in swan, daffodil, and fish if
time allows.
Learning fa
Expression
Testing definitions
Manipulatives
Movement
Rap-a-tap Tap (5)

Read book. On every page turn we will chant rap-a-tap tap,
think of that. The rhythm will be dotted eighth-sixteenth,
quarter, quarter, rest, eighth note, quarter note, eighth note,
eighth rest, and quarter rest. This will set us up for our
syncopation rhythm for today.
Body solfege
Moving to the rhythm
Metaphors
Rhythm (8)
Visuals
We will be going through the flash cards on the promethean board with syncopated
rhythms that we learned through the book read above. The students will clap and
say the rhythms as they read. This will be a group assessment to see if they are
clapping together as a group, and next week will be the individual assessment.
Colorful solfege
Rhythmic notation
Give Me A Kite (8)

Review the words from last week in the second verse with motions. Sing from the
beginning. Make sure all the words are correct along with the intonation of the
singing.
Learning fa (10)
Explain a five note scale. We know all of the syllables except one, which one is it?
Fa!
Teach little song: First Ill sing a five note scale: do, re, mi, fa, sol, sol. Last Ill
sing a three note scale: do, re, mi, re, do, do.
Put the solfege syllables that they sing in the song on the staff. We will sing
through a few exercises (they will be the solfege syllables for the beginning of the
song) and as we sing through them, I want to see if they realize that they are the
notes for the beginning of the song.
Heres an easy way

to use text you've
the basis for a new
paragraph,
character, or list
style:
1.
2.
Select the
text, on the
Format
menu, click
Styles and
Formatting,
and then click
New Style.
Youll see all
your style
characteristic
s displayed.
Name your
new style,
check the Add
to Template
box, and then
click OK.
I Wont Grow Up (8)

Review last weeks material first to make sure they have the words down.
Split into two groups. Now they are in charge of echoing to each other. When its
their turn to sing, their group stands. When its the other groups turn to sing, they
sit, and vice versa.

Stomp feet to the words pineapple, pineapple, apple, apple. This should get the
triple, douple feel in their bodies. Once they can stomp it without me, start saying
the other words to the song. Have them stomp and chant the words back with me.
Put movements to the rest of the words after the stomps, and have them follow as I
sing.
Repeat a few times to get the words and feel down of this section.
Expression (10)
We will remind ourselves of the definitions of each of our words. After we have
defined all of them I will split the class into four or five groups depending on our
numbers. Each group will get flash cards with the expressive words on them. I will
play a few musical examples and they will hold up which flash card best suits the
musical answer. My examples will be extremely obvious examples. This will make
assessment easier for me to see how theyre doing in small groups. I will keep up
with the answers on the board while Mr. Tanner keeps up with the points for
individual teams.

Company Name
Street Address
Address 2
Phone
Fax
E-mail
Were on the Web!
Web Address
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Week Seven: Rhythm
Last week I got to see where each individual student stood in their rhythmic
understanding. This week, being our second to last week, I wanted to give the students one more
challenge. The challenge I chose was syncopation. The students have sung many syncopated
rhythms unknowingly, and now it was time to put a name to the sound.
I introduced the rhythm by reading a book called Rap-a-tap Tap. During every page
turn the students said the phrase rap-a-tap tap, think of that. The words think of that was a
syncopated rhythm (eighth note, quarter note, eighth note). They could echo this phrase well, so I
added a challenge for them to tap either the rhythm or the beat during the page turn.
After finishing the book, I showed the students the rhythm that matched the words we
were saying while reading the book. The biggest visual difference for the students was seeing
eighth notes that were divided instead of barred together. I took a moment to make sure they saw
and understood the difference, saying that our eighth note brothers got in a fight, and split up
temporarily.
I then showed them the syncopated rhythm that we had been saying while reading the
book (shown above). We clapped and said the rhythm using the words think of that as used in
the reading. We also practiced with the words syn-co-pa for the syncopated rhythm. I
explained that this is the name we call this particular pattern, just like we have a name for quarter
and eighth notes (ta and ti-ti). I explained that in our music and rhythms that we would be
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reading, the syncopated pattern would never separate from each other; it would always have a
quarter note in between two eighth notes.
We began to read our first rhythm, which was our syncopated pattern followed by a half
note. For every rhythm that we read, I put parentheses around the syncopated rhythm as a
reminder that that particular pattern would never change. On their first reading I noticed that they
put a small pause in between the syncopated pattern and the half note. I did not want to clap the
rhythm for them right away (they are good at imitation), so I reminded them that our eighth notes
were faster than our quarter notes, and we had to start clapping our half note a lot sooner than
expected. They were still struggling, so I decided to demonstrate the rhythm for them. As
expected, they echoed the rhythm back perfectly.
We began to read a few other rhythms together that involved the syncopated pattern. I
ended up demonstrating a few more for them, but I began to notice that their clapping of the
syncopation was getting further and further from the correct sound each time they clapped the
rhythm (they were not holding the quarter note long enough). Because of this error, I went back
to the words they were using while reading the book, think of that. This temporarily fixed the
problem, but some were still having trouble.
Next week is our final week with this project. I am wanting to hear the students perform
rhythms individually once more to see how well they understand what they have learned in this
short eight week period. The students have shown tremendous growth throughout this short
project, and have shown excellent concentration skills throughout.
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Week Seven: Tonal

The five note scale was completed this week with the introduction of fa, the fourth scale
degree. The students of Lobo Choir have learned the solfege and body solfege for the complete
five note scale in addition to the lower dominate pitch. For this weeks lesson, I quickly
introduced fa to the students (most of them had prior knowledge of the concept), and showed
them a staircase visual that included all pitches that they have learned up to this point, except for
the lower dominant pitch.
I asked the students to follow my finger while I pointed to different pitches of the scale
degree. They followed well, and had minor mistakes in places that were expected. We went up
the scale step wise, but when we got to sol I skipped down to mi to see how they would tune
the skip. I would say about two or three people sang the correct pitch, while the remaining
students sang a pitch somewhere between the third and fourth scale degree. They did, however,
sing the skip from mi to do accurately, but when we did the pattern fa, sol, fa, mi, fa,
they did not sing the last fa in tune. This was the first half step that was introduced to them, so I
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explained that we have a smaller space in between mi and fa, than we do between any other
notes that we sing in our five note scale. I told them that we would call this small space a half
step.
Following the introduction of the fourth scale degree, I sang a song to the students. I
asked them to listen to the solfege that I sang in the song, and when I finished singing I would
ask a volunteer to come and write the notes on the board. I wrote the following words for the
short song: First Ill sing the five note scale. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, sol. Last Ill sing a three note
scale. Do re, mi, re, do, do. I isolated the first two sentences from the last two sentences, so they
would have an easier time hearing the solfege that I was asking them to write on the board.
The student who came up to write out the first set of solfege syllables (do, re, mi, fa, sol,
sol) wrote do on the correct line, but wrote re on the next line instead of the space above the
tonic pitch. We quickly corrected the mistake by looking at the staircase of solfege syllables
shown above, and walking up each line and space as if it were a staircase. While writing out the
second set of solfege syllabes (do, re, mi, re, do, do), the student put the second re where the
fourth scale degree should be. This was a quick fix as well, but it showed me that there needs to
be further explanation on how to write the notes on the staff.
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With next week being our last week for this project, I would like to hear each student sing
individually to see where their tonal understanding lies. The students have shown tremendous
growth throughout this short project, and have shown excellent concentration skills throughout.
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Week Seven: Expression

In this weeks demonstration of expressive qualities in music, I had the students listen to
different classical examples that exemplified all of the expressive qualities we have learned thus
far. Those qualities are piano, forte, crescendo, decrescendo, staccato, legato, ritardando, and
accelerando. I split the class into four groups and gave them flash cards representing each
expression. I would like to note that I made a mistake while making the flash cards. I mistakenly
left our staccato and legato, so when the students were listening to the example that exemplified
staccato and legato sounds they were not sure what to think.
Last week we noted that every expression had an opposite. The opposite of loud was soft
(forte and piano), the opposite of short was long (staccato and legato), etc. For this weeks
listening exercise, most of the listenings had two answers to them. Each group was to hold up
the flash cards with the correct symbol of what they were hearing in the listening. This way of
answering also assisted me in quickly assessing which group had the correct answer.
The first example was Symphony number 40 in g minor arranged by John Fierabend. In
this listening example, there were drastic differences in dynamics. The beginning of the piece
started piano, and by two seconds into the piece the dynamic changed for forte. This pattern of
changing from piano to forte every few seconds continues on for the first fifteen seconds of the
piece. I played the first fifteen seconds twice for the students. When asked for the answer, three
out of the four groups answered correctly. The other group answered crescendo and decrescendo
which told me they were thinking on the right track as far as dynamics are concerned.
The second example was Mozarts Serenade in G. In this listening example, there were
consistent crescendos and decrescendos towards the beginning of the piece. The first to occur
was a decrescendo, but it did not occur until about 15 seconds into the piece. I believe this made
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the listening much harder for the students. They were expecting to hear something right away,
but instead, they had to wait. About 35 seconds into the piece, there was a steady crescendo
leading up to a solid forte within the instruments. Again, I played the first 40 seconds twice for
the students to hear and make a decision. Only one group got the correct answer for this listening
example. Another group held up ritardando and accelerando; which I can see how they might
have heard a slight slowing down at the decrescendo and a slight speeding up at the crescendo.
The other two groups held up piano and forte again. I believe they were unaware that once you
used an answer once, it was not used again. I should have been clearer in my directions regarding
that aspect.
The third example was an extremely difficult one to answer, being that it was the
example for which they had no flash cards. The piece was from Tchaikovskys Swan Lake.
The song takes place in Act 3 in the castle of Prince Siegfried. It is a Spanish dance. The flute
part plays many staccato notes in the beginning of the piece, but it takes an entire minute and
twenty seconds to get to the legato part of the piece. I let them listen to about a minute and forty
seconds of the piece to get a good idea, and I even threw in some short, quick movements with
my body during the flutes staccato notes alone with a dancing motion when it came to the legato
section. When it came time to present the answer, it was then that I realized they did not have the
correct cards in front of them. I should have realized sooner seeing the confused look on most of
their faces, including my student assistants. All of the groups held up the ritardando and
accelerando flash cards as their answer, which is the best answer from what they had in front of
them. I directed their attention to the board and had them choose from the word they saw listed,
which were staccato, legato, ritardando, and accelerando. They immediately answered correctly.
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The fourth listening example was an early childhood song called Jenny Jenkins. At the
end of each phrase, the singers in this particular recording sang a drastic ritardando. The students
heard this rather quickly and every group answered correctly.
The fifth and final listening example was Edward Griegs Hall of the Mountain King.
Last week we listened and moved to this piece in order to understand accelerando. Most, if not
all, of the students remembered this from the week prior, and all groups answered correctly on
this listening as well.
Next week will be our last week doing this project. I will be splitting the class into four
small groups again, but they will be singing and moving to a song that the entire class will learn
prior to the activity. Each group will be assigned two expressive qualities that oppose one
another and the groups will sing and move as they sing with that particular expression. The
students have shown tremendous growth throughout this short project, and have shown excellent
concentration skills throughout.
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Week Eight
Introduction: Week Eight
For the final week of this project, I designed the lesson plan for individual performance.
Most of the assessment during this eight week project has been group assessment, but I wanted
the last week to be more about individual growth. I have watched my students grow
tremendously over the last eight weeks, and am very proud to see their progress.
We will begin with the tonal exercise. I will split the group in half and they will sit in two
circles. I will be in charge of one circle while my assistant Lauren will be in charge of the other.
Lauren and I will have four letters with solfege exercises written in them to give to students. The
students will sing a song while Lauren and I walk around the outside of our circles. At the end of
the song, we will give the student that we landed behind a letter. The student will sing the
melody written in the letter and we will give them a rating of 1-5, one being they could not
match pitch at all, and five being they performed the melody perfectly.
For the expressive exercise I will split the class into four groups and give each group a set
of expressive words that are opposite of one another. I will instruct them to use these expressions
in the song Way Down in the African Jungle. After that group sings, the rest of the class will
have to guess what expression they were using when singing.
Lastly, the rhythm exercise will be the rhythm tic-tac-toe game from week six. Just as the
tonal exercise was ran, I will be giving each student a score from 1-5, one being they cannot keep
a steady beat, and five being they performed the rhythm perfectly. The student performing the
rhythm must receive a five to get an X or an O for their team.
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The visual aspects in this lesson include the solfege letters, the promethean board, and the
tic-tac-toe board. Please see the lesson plan on the next page, followed by in depth descriptions
of how each part of the lesson was received.
Lobo Choir: Week 8Reading and Performing

GRADES 2ND-4TH
APRIL 6, 2015
Materials
Sheet with students
names for tonal groups
Letters with solfege
exercises in them
Rhythm
Rhythm tic-tac-toe
Warm Up (10)
Rosie, Darling Rosie game. Pg 10 in 150 American Folk Songs.
The children sing the first verse while being in two circles, one within the other. On
the second verse a child picks a partner to skip in and out of the circles with them.
The leader takes the childs spot that he/she chose on the third verse, and can act
out the words while singing them. The child that was chosen as the partner
becomes the new leader and chooses their partner on the repeated second verse.
Tonal
Reading Solfege (20)
Letters with solfege

exercises in them
The students will be split into two groups. We will learn a simple song and sing it
together, but at the end of the song, myself and Ms. Lauren will hand a student
something that looks like a letter. Inside this letter will be a simple one measure
solfege exercise containing notes from our five note scale that weve learned. The
notes will be on staff notation with the starting letter of the pitch underneath the
note.
Expression
Moving and singing to
different expressive
qualities
Manipulatives
Myself and Ms. Lauren will have a sheet with the students names in our group. After
they sing Im going to ask Ms. Lauren to rate them on a scale of 0-5. I will do the
same with my group
Letters
Movement
Moving to expressive
qualities
Metaphors
Visuals
Tic-tac-toe
Watching other groups
move to different
expressive qualities
Expression (20)
The students will already be in groups of two. I will split those
groups in half to make four groups. The students have already
learned a song called Way Down in the African Jungle. I will
be using the end of the song to conduct this activity.
The last phrase is repeated twice. This sets the students up for
success for this activity, as they will be singing this last phrase
in their groups with different expressive qualities.
Each group will get two expressive qualities to work with, and
they will be opposite of one another. I will give the groups
about 5 to 7 minutes to come up with ideas of how they should
sing and move to the end of the song with the expressions I
have given them. At the end of the allotted time, the entire
class will sing the beginning of the song and each group will
take turns singing the ending of the song with their expressive
qualities. The other three groups will try to guess what the
expression the other group was using. They have to explain
how they were using their voices to express their particular

expression.
Rhythm (20)
Get back in original groups of two facing the board. They will be playing rhythm tictac-toe again, but instead of having the game board taped on the floor, the game
will be interactive on the promethean board.

Review mm. 28-37 from last meeting.
I Wont Grow Up (5)

Review mm. 25-32. Go on to second verse if theyre ready.
Give Me a Kite (5)

Review words for second verse.

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Week Eight: Rhythm
Last week the students were given the final challenge of learning a syncopated pattern.
They have shown tremendous growth in their rhythm skills, therefore, I wanted to give them one
final challenge before the final week of the project. This week I repeated the rhythm tic-tac-toe
game from week six. Just as in the tonal exercise, I wanted to hear the students perform rhythms
individually. Below is the tic-tac-toe board with all of the rhythms shown.
The class was split into two groups of eight. When it was their turn, they clicked on a box
and a rhythm appeared. They had to clap and say the rhythm in order to get an X or an O for
their team. I purposefully made the middle box a syncopated rhythm, in that the middle box is
the most important box in tic-tac-toe. In the beginning of class we performed a song with the
exact rhythm in the middle box, and each student that clicked on the middle box was given that
hint before clapping and saying the rhythm.
Unlike the tonal exercise, I was unable to take notes on each individual student in the
moment of the exercise. Instead I used video footage to score each students performance. The
scoring ranged from 1 to 5, with one being they could not keep a steady beat and five being
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performing the rhythm perfectly. In order to get an X or an O for their team they had to get a
score of a 5 on the rhythm.
Student
Rhythm
box
Score
Notes
Student
1
Middle
box
Im afraid I might have given too big of a hint and she copied
what I said.
Student
2
Top right
I saw her hands clapping the correct rhythm, but her words
were a little behind. She did the same thing on the second try.
Student
3
Bottom
Middle
Held the rests a hair longer than needed, but I gave it to her.
Student
4
Top
Middle
It took her three tries to get it perfect, but the only hint I gave
her was a steady beat.
Student
5
Far right,
middle
Got it perfectly the first time.
Student
6
Far left,
middle
Student
7
Bottom
right
Student
8
Top left
Clapped it perfectly without saying tas and ti-tis the first

time, I asked her to clap and say it, and she did it perfectly the
second time.
Student
9
Top right
Got it on the second try with my keeping a steady beat.
Student
10
Bottom
left
Originally she chose the middle square, but I let her choose a
different square because I knew the middle square was out of
this particular students reach. She performed the bottom left
square perfectly the first time.
Student
11
Top right
Student
12
Middle
Knew all the names of the rhythms, but did not get the correct
timing.
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Student
13
Middle
Student
14
Bottom
right
Student
15
Top right
Took too much time in between rhythms
Student
16
Top left
Almost half of the class clapped and said their rhythms perfectly on their first reading;
students five, six, seven, eleven, thirteen, fourteen, and sixteen. I was not surprised that students
five, eleven, thirteen, and sixteen performed their rhythms perfectly, as they have performed at a
higher level all semester. I was impressed with the others, as I have seen them struggle in the
past.
The only students that did not perform their rhythms perfectly were students two, twelve,
and fifteen. Student two surprised me, but I knew she understood what she was doing just by
watching her hands. I could not give her the X simply because she was not saying the correct
rhythm out loud. The other two students were off on their timing, but knew the names of each
note.
All of these students have shown tremendous growth in their rhythmic skills. I was
extremely impressed with the students that understood and performed the syncopated rhythms. It
is challenging to learn a different rhythmic notation every week and be expected to remember
and perform it week after week. I am extremely proud of my students in their rhythmic growth.
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Week Eight: Tonal
With this week being our final meeting for this project, my goal was to see how each
student did individually with a tonal exercise. So far, the students have learned the notes of a five
note scale along with the lower dominant pitch, sol. I decided to use the upper dominant pitch
in this exercise instead of incorporating both. This decision was made based on time constraints,
and wanting to focus solely on the ascending five note scale. I incorporated four tonal patterns in
this exercise, ranging from easy to difficult; the difficultly level was based off of leaps in the
pattern. The patterns, in order from least challenging to most challenging can be seen below.
1.
2.
3.
4.
The class was split into two groups, and each group sat in a circle. I was the leader in one
circle, while my assistant, Lauren, was the leader in the second circle. Both circles directed their
attention to the board to read each of the above exercises together as a class.
I started off with number three, and they sang it fairly well without the letters underneath
the notes. I started to put the letters underneath the notes, but heard a few students say we dont
need those! That was great to hear, but I decided to put the letters below the notes for anyone
who still might be having a bit of trouble reading in the lines and spaces, even though most of
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our practicing has been without the aid of the letters. From there, we read the other three without
the aid of the letters. Their singing was moderately accurate, but there were also some wrong
notes. This made me curious to see how they would do individually.
The class sang the song Postman while myself and Lauren walked around the outside
of our circles.
At the end of the song, the students that Lauren and I landed behind got a letter, and inside of the
letter was one of the four tonal exercises above. Lauren and I had a list of each student in our
groups. Beside the students name was the color of card they received, a score from one to five
(one being they could not sing tonic and five being singing the exercise perfectly), and any other
notes we had about the students. A list has been made below. The first eight students were in
Laurens groups, while the last eight students were in my group.
Student
Color
Number of
Exercise
Notes
Student 1
Red
Got it on second try
Student 2
Green
Got it with some help
Student 3
Red
Couldnt find do, but then got it after a few tries
Student 4
Red
Couldnt find mi or re; sang high do.
Student 5
Red
Got it on second try
Student 6
Orange
Didnt match pitch
Student 7
Orange
Wouldnt sing
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Student 8
Blue
Didnt match pitch
Student 9
Blue
Sang it perfectly
Student
10
Green
Sang mi instead of re. Jumping too high too

soon.
Student
11
Orange
Didnt get up to mi, but got sol
Student
12
Orange
Sang it perfectly
Student
13
Red
Sang it perfectly
Student
14
Green
Didnt get the last do
Student
15
Red
Sang it perfectly
Student
16
Orange
Sang it perfectly
I noticed that Lauren chose to use the orange and red letters more often, and only used the
blue and green letters once. I also used the blue letter once (only because that student really
wanted blue), and used the red, orange, and green more equally. By the looks of my scores
compared to Laurens, it seems as if I was grading less harshly. I would like to make a note that
it just so happened to pan out that Lauren got most of the students that were struggling. I did not
take notice to this right away, for if I had, I would have made the decision to be in charge of her
circle instead of mine. However, the video camera was set up next to her group, allowing me to
see all of the interactions between her and the students. Most, if not all of my students were older
and have had private music lessons.
Starting with Laurens group, students one, two and five received scores that fit their
performance throughout the semester. All three of these students have been attentive during each
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activity, and at least one of them takes music lessons privately. I was extremely shocked with
student three, as I have heard her singing monotoned for the past few weeks. Lauren gave her a
score of three with notes indicating that she did not match tonic at first, but then got it after a few
tries. This tells me that the student might be having trouble making the connection of where the
notes sit in her body and voice.
The rest of the students in Laurens group, students four, six, seven, and eight, all
received scores of two. Student four had melody number three and was unable to climb the scale.
This student has had some trouble in previous weeks with certain exercises, but unfortunately,
this is the first time we have heard the students singing individually on solfege syllables. Student
four could have been following along well with the class, but could be more unstable when
singing by herself.
Student six was given the orange letter. I understand why Lauren did this, as student six
sings confidently in class. However, she does not always sing the correct notes. Her confident
singing mixed with her wrong notes can be frustrating for myself and the rest of the class. In
Laurens notes she stated that student six could not match pitch. I understood, but was also
surprised. When watching the video footage of the student working with Lauren, the student
never matches the pitch that Lauren gives her.
Student seven was shy, and opted not to sing. Knowing her personality, this made sense
to me, but I cannot help but wonder if she would have given it a try if Lauren had given her the
blue letter instead of the orange letter.
Lastly, student eight could not match pitch as well. This is also a student that sings wrong
notes in rehearsal very confidently, and even attempts to add vibrato. For this particular student,
and perhaps even student six as well, I believe it is more of an attention issue rather than a
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disconnect of where the pitch sits in their voice. I am making this assumption having heard the
two of them sing in tune prior to this activity.
Out of my eight students, students nine, twelve, thirteen, fifteen, and sixteen received
perfect scores. Before class began, I instructed Lauren not to give out scores of five unless it was
absolute perfection; I expected to see more fours than fives. I was shocked that more than half
of my group received perfect scores. However, those four students are older and have had prior
music lessons before joining the group. I will say that I was extremely shocked that student 12
received a perfect score on the orange letter. She is one of the oldest, and takes private
instrumental lessons, but I have heard her trying to sing down the octave in rehearsals. Hearing
this made me think she was having trouble finding where the notes were sitting in her voice.
Having this knowledge before this activity, I still wanted to give her the most difficult exercise to
see how she dealt with the skips. She sang it perfectly the first time through, so perhaps her
singing down the octave is out of laziness instead of uncertainty. I will be monitoring her more
as the semester progresses.
Student ten is a confident singer, just as students six and eight, but tens intonation is
much better. Student ten had the second exercise, and instead of singing do, re, mi, do, she sang
do, mi, sol, do the first time through. On her second try she sang do, re, mi, do, but sounded
uncertain on re.
Student eleven had performed her exercise for me prior to student ten. She received
exercise number four, and instead of singing do, mi, sol, do, she sang do, re, mi, do; the exact
opposite of student ten. When student ten sang her exercise correctly, student eleven leaned over
to me and said that was what I sang at first. I was proud to see that she heard and remembered
that mistake.
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Lastly, student fourteen sang exercise number two, and performed the first three notes
(do, re, and mi) well in tune, however, she had trouble getting back to tonic after singing the
third scale degree. I debated giving her a score of four instead of three, but I chose three because
I felt that getting back to home base, tonic, was an easier jump than going from do to mi.
Overall, these students have shown tremendous growth in this short eight week time
frame. I introduced something new to them not only tonally, but rhythmically and expressively
almost every week. Their focus was wonderful, and they have truly grown as musicians.
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Week Eight: Expression
With this week being our final week together on this project, I wanted to hear the
students come up with ways to sing these expressions in a song they had learned in the beginning
of the semester, Way Down in the African Jungle.
The class was split into four groups, and each group was given a set of expressive words
that were opposite of one another. Before splitting into groups to plan how they would sing the
song, instructions were given to sing the first part of the song as a class, and the individual
groups would sing the last half of the song with their designated expressions. It was the job of
the individual groups to sing the second half of the song as clearly as possible, as the rest of the
classs job was to guess what expressive tools they were using in their singing voices.
The most difficult expression for this particular group of students is crescendo and
decrescendo. They do very well with forte and piano as dynamic markings, however, they still
have some difficulty growing and decaying in sound. The group of four students to which I gave
this challenge did not perform expressively enough for the class to guess what they were singing.
The class eventually guessed by process of elimination, but that does not tell me that they heard
the growth and decay in sound in their classmates voices.
The group that performed staccato and legato began by singing staccato. You could tell
by the looks on the other students faces that they were not quite sure what they were singing. I
believe this is because they were not making the notes short enough. However, on the repeat,
they made their voices very smooth; it was a nice contrast. As soon as they made this change in
their voices, many hands shot up to give the answer of what expression they were using. The
group following had the same experience. The expressions they were assigned were piano and
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forte. The group started with just a few people singing (making their sound soft), and on the
repeat everyone in the group joined in (making their sound much fuller).
The last group to perform had the expressions ritardando and accelerando. They
performed these expressions accurately, and the class had no difficulties understanding what
expressions they were performing.
Overall, this group of students has understood and performed all of the musical
expressions introduced to them accurately and musically. They understand the concept of each
expression by definition, and they are able to move and sing to them as well.
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Conclusion
Discussion
To close, the research that I have done and the lessons that I have executed clearly show
that visuals and manipulatives in the childrens choir rehearsal do assist in teaching rhythmic,
tonal, and expressive qualities. I would like to revisit each of my research questions on which I
began this project, and discuss how I believe the answers were met in the execution of this
project.
1. How do children respond to learning rhythm through manipulatives and visuals?
I found that this choir was particularly good at learning rhythms. They had prior
knowledge about the function of quarter notes and rests and eighth notes. Half notes, half rests
and syncopation were all new concepts to most of the students in the choir. The choir responded
well with manipulatives such as rhythm sticks and composition cards. I saw that the composition
cards were helpful to some students as far as organization of a rhythm. I included toothpicks as
bar lines to better organize their rhythms as they were composing. Also, it helped me with my
assessment as I went around while they composed. If I did not see the bar lines, I knew they had
missed that piece of the puzzle. As for the remainder of the project, most of the visuals for
rhythm included actual rhythmic notation.
2. How do children respond to learning tonality through manipulatives and visuals?
Through the tonal pre-test, I found that this choir could hold tonic while I sang other
notes. After singing notes other than tonic, the students were able to get back to home base or
sing the tonic pitch with no problem. Seeing and hearing this, I wanted to introduce solfege to
them. Some of the students knew some solfege syllables already, but was unaware on how to
116
apply it to reading music. My main visual for tonal activities was body solfege (physical visual)
and musical notation. I found that in some lessons when I was trying to introduce musical
notation, they would sing a melody better if they did the body solfege before singing it out loud.
Or, if they made a mistake while singing a short melody, as soon as body solfege was added they
were able to perform the melody more precisely. I will be using body solfege to introduce
singing from staff notation in my future teaching. I believe the kinesthetic aspect attached to it is
a strong physical visual for students to see where the note is located. Once they see where the
note lives in their bodies, they are able to better place the note in their voices, and see where it
lives on the staff.
3. How do children respond to learning expression through manipulatives and visuals?

Teaching expression through manipulatives and visuals was an interesting, and almost a
challenging task. I ended up using a hoberman sphere and scarves as manipulatives, musical
symbols as visuals, and metaphors. I found that the hoberman sphere was extremely useful for
dynamic contrast. The sphere visually grows and decays gradually, giving the students a better
idea of just how slowly or quickly they need to increase and decrease their volume musically. I
feel that this manipulative would be helpful in any age choir. The scarves were used to show
phrasing in songs. These were only used a few times, as I introduced musical symbols to them
early in the project. I believe the students responded well to the musical symbols, however, the
responded much better when movement was incorporated. The metaphors used were to better
explain legato and staccato singing (as explained in the Post-Narrative). Not only did the
students like to use their imagination, but they also enjoyed the movement aspect attached to the
117
metaphors used.
4. Which are the students preferred manipulatives?

I believe the preferred manipulative was the hoberman sphere for dynamics. The students
enjoyed all of the manipulatives, but not only were they the most excited about the hoberman
sphere, they also had the best sound outcome when using it.
I will be continuing to try out different visuals to assist my students in learning music.
Because of this project, I can go into my first year of teaching with researched material that I
know works well with childrens choirs. I feel that as my visual and manipulative ideas and
activities continue to grow, so will my teaching. Each child bring something new to the table,
and I feel that this project has prepared me through research and teaching experience to be able
to handle a variety of occurrences that could happen in the choral classroom.
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Post Project Narrative

After spending the past eight weeks working with my choir on their growth in rhythm,
tonal, and expressive qualities in music, I feel I am better prepared to teach with visuals and
manipulatives in a childrens choir setting. In the past I have used many visuals in my teaching,
however, with my research and hands on experience with the Lobo Choir, my teaching has been
strengthened through the use of visuals and manipulatives.
I also learned a lot when planning and executing my lesson plans. When planning
lessons, I felt myself slipping into the bad habit of just wanting to teaching notes. It was a good
challenge for me to try to pull out teachable moments in the songs we were singing. Our
rehearsal time is precious, therefore, creating games and activities that are based around the
repertoire we are preparing for a concert allows for more efficient use of time. While executing
the lessons, I learned that not all visuals were helpful to the students. There were some weeks
that I needed to repeat a lesson with a more well thought out visual activity for the students, and
usually by the second week the students had a much better understanding of the concept they
were learning.
There were also times where I did not necessarily have to repeat a concept the next week,
but I would have to differentiate instruction. For example, if I saw that most of the class were
understanding and performing a concept well, but a select few students were not, I would try
explaining or showing other ways in which to do the activity. In one of the lessons I teach the
difference between legato and staccato singing. At first, I tell people to sing as if they are
walking through a room of jello. I used this visual to get a legato sound, as walking through jello
would involve a consistent flow of motion. However, the students were not thinking about being
119
inside of jello, they were looking at it from the outside. I changed the visual to a giant ball of
bubble gum, and asked them to pull it in different directions for each phrase they sang in the
song. This visual worked much better for this set of students.
I look forward to building my visual and manipulative activities as I continue teaching.
This project has given me the tools to continue in my research and use of visuals in the choral
classroom. I have seen how helpful it can be for both the students and myself, and I look forward
to learning more about it.
120
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http://libproxy.unm.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1031414?accounti
d=14613
Appendix
Please click on the link below to see the songs that were used during this project.
https://mccollumb.wordpress.com/appendix/
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The Use of Visuals and Manipulatives in the

Childrens Choral Rehearsal

Project Supervisor: Dr. Regina Carlow

Purpose of the Project & Research Questions

Working with Young Choirs

The Use of Physical Engagement for Visual Stimulation

Visual Stimulations in the Choral Rehearsal

Lobo Choir: Week 1Pre-assessment

Lobo Listener and Rockin Respect award announcement.

Ah, Poor Bird

Listen to the Rain (10)

Let them listen to a rain stick.

Whisper mm. 2-5 before making rain

I Wont Grow Up (10)

Heres an easy way

Ah, Poor Bird (7)

Give Me a Kite (10)

Shalom My Friends (3)

Week One: Rhythm Pre-Test

Week One: Tonal Pre-Test

Week One: Expression Pre-Test

Lobo Choir: Week 2

Listen to the Rain (10)

I Wont Grow Up (15)

Start singing and moving to the beginning, and have them

Heres an easy way

Give Me a Kite (10)

Make sure they have their words down.

Start at the beginning and learn up to measure 35 in sequential order.

Shalom My Friends (3)

Week Two: Rhythm

Week Two: Tonal

Week Two: Expression

Lobo Choir: Week 3-Dictating do and

Listen to the Rain (10)

Give Me a Kite (10)

Heres an easy way

I Wont Grow Up (20)

Here Comes Sally (10)

Shalom My Friends (3)

Week Three: Rhythm

Week Three: Tonal

Week Three: Expression

Because they seemed to be so knowledgeable about crescendos and decrescendos, I

Lobo Choir: Week 4-High sol;

Introduce high sol

See how they do with reading a line of music.

Introduce half notes, and clap a few examples together.

Heres an easy way

Shalom My Friends (3)

Week Four: Rhythm

Week Four: Tonal

Week Four: Expression

Lobo Choir: Week 5-Mi & Re;

Introducing mi and re (12)

I Wont Grow Up (8)

Heres an easy way

Give Me a Kite (10)

Listen to the Rain (8)

Shalom My Friends (2)

Week Five: Rhythm

Week Five: Tonal