Teach the song using reading skills or by rote to help with the language.

Listen to “Ball go Round.” Explain how the game is played. Play the game. You may want to sing only the first two lines of the song before stopping and asking the student in the center to guess who has the ball. The game will move along faster if you shorten the song.

For the game, you may want to sing only a portion of the song. The first line would be easy for the students to learn. Form a circle. One student is selected to go into the circle and hide their eyes. As the class sings, they pass a beachball behind their backs. At the end of the song, the player in the middle guesses who has the beachball.

This song gives the students the opportunity to create a rhythm rondo. The song, “Play That Rhythm” will be the theme of the rondo. The variations will be rhythm compositions created by the students. Teach the song by rote. Create 4 bar rhythm patterns to play on Boomwhackers or rhythm instruments. Use the song as the theme of a rondo and your rhythm patterns as the B, C, D sections. The final form will be A B A C A D A.

Your students will create the B-C-D variations using a variety of rhythm instruments. You could have the class as a whole create the rhythm compositions and decide which instruments to play them on. If your students are good at working independently, you could divide them into small groups to create their own rhythm compositions. If they are not good independent workers, you may prefer to do the composition as a teacher-led activity with the entire class. Choose a variety of unpitched rhythm instruments with which to play the rhythm compositions.