Writing in the Music Room

I know that one of the things I have tried to do more this year is provide more writing practice on known concepts during our lessons. I hope to blog more about this topic in the future as it is an on-going goal to continually do more with this. It such a great way for me to have a chance to really see who is getting the concepts, and who may need more help and support. It is also good for assessment and many districts are experiencing a huge push towards writing with the Common Core.

My kiddos have been practicing la so I pulled out this song:

Here's how we play the game. One student is "it" and sits facing away from the class. The class sings the first two lines and one student who I choose sings the last line as a solo. The person who is "it" must guess who is the mystery singer. This song is a great opportunity for me to hear individuals and squeeze in some solo singing assessment when they think I am just keeping track of turns. Sometimes when I have a squirrely class that may sing silly I do tell them that I am taking a pitch matching grade, but usually I don't need to.

After playing the game we go to the board and read the song with melodic icons like these. They sing on text first as I point to the pictures, then we sing on solfa with hand sings. Eventually the icons move onto the staff and we show where la would live if sol and mi are on lines or spaces.

Then, instead of printing out a worksheet for each student, we did this page together, projected onto the board. We focused in on the second measure only and I had individual students come up to the board and fill in the note heads. Once all the note heads were added, we then added the stems and beams. Doing this together as a class is really helpful for the students who need to see it modeled before doing something similar on their own.  

If you are interested in the slides and printable/projectable worksheet that I used for "Johnny's It" you can find it here.

What are some of the most successful ways you incorporate writing in your music room?