Steady Beat and Ta/ Ti-ti Student Sheets

I am always looking for quick meaningful ways of assessing my students. One super easy way of seeing if your kids are ready for the presentation of steady beat is to use beat tracking charts. When I pull out a beat tracking chart during the prepare stage, I never label it as the "steady beat". I simply say "help pat our knees while I point to these pictures of the snails" 

 or "Watch me point to the trains as they leave the station!" 

I call their attention to how I point from left to right and where I go when I get to the end of the first line (the beginning of the second line). All of these things help or reinforce what the classroom teachers are doing to teach these young ones how to read.

After they have watched me point lots of times over a period of time, and they seem like they are able to keep the beat in their laps, I ask other students to use my pointers to help us follow the trains. They all want a turn to use the fancy pointer and be the leader and so I usually have to spread it over several class periods so everyone can get a turn. While one student is pointing at the white board, the rest of the class can watch and pat, play classroom percussion instruments like the sand blocks or rhythm sticks or they could practice pointing at their own beat chart (like my student beat charts above). 

After we have labeled the steady beat, I use heart beat charts for a while to reinforce the terminology:

These heart beat charts from my beat charts packet on TpT. It includes hearts and a variety of other clip art to go along with songs from your folk song collection.

 Available here!

When practicing, student beat charts make for a fast assessment. I can walk down each row while we sing and watch to see if students are able to keep the beat by pointing to the icons. 

After I present ta and ti-ti I use a student sheet like this so that they can practice writing the rhythms on each beat. I tell them that each bar is one beat.

I could even have them write the rhythms to a new or familiar song without telling them the title using my dictation sheets:

These student sheets for beat and rhythm (ta & titi) are available on my Teachers Pay Teachers store here.

This set is 32 pages and includes beat and rhythm pages for the following songs:

Apple Tree
Bee Bee Bumblebee
Bounce High Bounce Low
Engine Engine Number Night
I Climbed Up the Apple Tree
Lucy Locket
Queen Queen Caroline
Rain Rain Go Away
See Saw Up and Down
Snail, Snail
Starlight, Starbright

Plus four pages for dictation/mystery song.

I have also added the student rhythm writing worksheet for Bounce High Bounce Low as a freebie in my store. Click here.

Just one more thing: I hit a personal goal yesterday selling my 100th item on TpT. To celebrate, I will throw a 15% off sale- TODAY ONLY!

Hope you have a great weekend!