3 engaging practice activities for your music classroom
Comments Off on 3 engaging practice activities for your music classroomRead on for ideas for how to use these engaging practice activities along with links to some examples across several concepts, available via the Music Teachers’ Digital Library (note, these are only accessible with a subscription).
The MTDL has a wealth of practice activities, detailed within concept strategies, but also setup as generic resources you can apply in any context, across rhythm, melody, metre and more.
You can search for these using the side menu tags and toggle options to narrow down what type of activity you need and at what stage.
We’ve also got them organised via main pages like this one for Ways to Practice Rhythm. This houses a collection for early, mid and late rhythm practice activities, as well as the various types – aural, visual, written & creative.
There’s similar pages set up for both Ways to Practice Melody and Ways to Practice Metre. So, let’s explore some example activities now.
Metre Practice Activity: Bar Improvisation
In this activity, students improvise two-beat rhythms to fill bars in abstract Duple Metre rhythms.
- Students are given an abstract 2-4 rhythm on the board.
- When the rhythm is written on the board, all students say the rhythm names while tapping the beat.
- Using a given rhythm set (e.g. Crotchets, Quavers & Crotchet Rests and Semiquavers), students take turns to improvise each bar that is missing two beats by individually saying rhythm names while the class continues keeping the beat.
Melodic Practice Activity: Student Melodic Sightreading
In this activity, students read (and create) abstract do re mi so patterns from students “being” the notes.
- The teacher invites students to come up to the front and face the students in a line – one student per note in the tone set being practiced.
- The first student on the left is do, the second from the left is re, the third from the left is mi and so on.
- The class must decide how best each student is positioned to show their note best e.g. if do sits crossed legged on the floor then re could be in a half kneel (kneeling with backside down onto heels), mi could be in an upright kneel and so on.
- Keeping a steady beat, the teacher points to, or lightly taps, students in turn (and rhythm if desired) creating melodic sightreading exercises for the class to sing back in solfa showing handsigns.
Rhythmic Practice Activity: Pass The Rhythm
In this activity, students sing known songs with the rhythm names and take it in turns to clap the rhythm on beats of the song.
- The class sit in a circle and sing a known song with the words and then in rhythm names, while tapping the beat on their knees.
- The class sings the song again, tapping the beat on their knees while the first student claps the rhythm on the first beat of the song, the student on their left claps the rhythm on the second beat of the song and so on.
- Continue around the circle until all students have had several turns.
Let the Music Teacher’s Digital Library (MTDL) offer you many more practice activities!
Happy exploring, everyone! – Deb
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