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While teaching this learning module you will cover multiple concepts including: Beat, Melodic Direction (high-middle-low)
You'll also cover the themes of: Dreams
In this lesson, you will:
Extension:
Musicplay is a menu. The teacher is not expected to teach every song or activity. Choose the songs and activities from the list that will best fit your schedule and the needs of your students.
Hold On To Your Dream, a new original by John Jacobson, is uplifting ballad for young singers encouraging them to follow their dreams even in the face of adversity.
This song is part of the musical American Song: A Patriotic Celebration by John Jacobson.
If your students can read the rhythm of the melody, read it together. Then read the words in rhythm. If your students can read do-re-mi-so-la, have them read the melody. If this is too difficult, teach the melody of the song by rote.
Teach the Orff parts, starting with the BX/BM.
- BX/BM – you could use the words “This is a day to reflect” to teach the rhythm.
- Sing and play.
- Teach all the parts using movement and/or body percussion and then transfer it to the instruments. (For example – AX/AM – circle with your arms on 1-2-3-4-1, then say “let’s play” and pat legs.)
- SX/SM/SG – snap the part. Tell the students to snap after the word dream. On bar 4, snap on beat 3.
- Add the wind chime part if you have them.
Paper Scissors Rock is a truly universal children’s game. When the author was in China in 1991 she saw children in a rural area playing it. Pansy Wynne is a Chinese Canadian from Brunei. She played this game as a child in Brunei. The song is sung and chanted.
On the words gu loong gu loong pssh, the children roll arms and end up by showing paper, scissors or rock. The first two times it is done, it doesn’t count. The third time a winner is declared. The play continues.
Have students sing this song in AABA form and create an 8-measure rhythm sequence to perform with Boomwhackers®, rhythm instruments or body percussion.
To start, have students write rhythms using note squares. When they have successfully written and performed rhythms using note squares, they can transfer what they have learned by writing rhythms on the beat charts. Then they can copy their rhythm onto the four measure staff below. There are many ways to play a rhythm composition. Just a few ideas are given here:
1. Play the rhythms on instruments. A rest must always be silent. You could show a rest with a movement.
2. Play all the quartre notes one way and the eighth notes a different way.
3. Assign different instruments to each measure. Try a variety of combinations and choose the one you like the
best. Play the measures one after the other OR play all the measures at the same time.
4. Play the pattern as a rhythm canon. Divide into two groups. Group 1 begins and plays the composition twice.
Group 2 begins when group 1 finishes the first line and plays the entire piece twice.
5. Play the fourth measure as an ostinato. Begin and end with the ostinato alone. Continue the ostinato while the
other instruments play the composition.
6. Try having two groups play their creations at the same time.
When groups have decided how to perform their compositions they should present them to the class. You can choose one of the compositions to use as the B section in the song “It’s a Whacky Kind of Sound”. To facilitate
this activity you can use the worksheet below.