Ways to gamify beat in your music classroom.
Comments Off on Ways to gamify beat in your music classroom.Beat is defined as a regular movement or sound. In music, the beat is a regular, repeated pulse that helps create tempo or speed in music.
Really knowing beat can make all the difference for rhythm so don’t overlook the obvious and practice this concept regularly with all levels of students.
So, here’s a few suggestions for gamifying beat in your classroom, available via the Music Teachers’ Digital Library (note, some are free, but others are only accessible with a subscription).
A Qua Qua
Let’s start now with A Qua Qua, which is great for teaching & practicing beat. It’s also an opportunity for celebrating diverse music of different cultures as A Qua Qua is a traditional Israeli song.
Students sit in a single circle holding their hands out in front of the people beside them. Their left hand should face up under the person’s hand on their left and their right hand should face down on top of the person’s hand on the right.
Beginning on the first beat of the first full bar, the chosen first person takes their right hand cross their body and taps the person’s hand on their left thus “passing the beat”.
This person then does the same and so on around the circle on the beat. At the end of the song the student who gets tapped on the 5th beat is out unless they pull their hand away, in which case the person who moved to tap them is out. Students can speed up during the counting.
Mal Mal Mal
This song is great for working on the concept of melisma or the notion of beat passing patterns.
- Students sit in a circle with legs crossed and a stone, stick or other object in front of them on the floor.
- Keeping the beat, they pass the stone to the left around the circle.
- Beat 1: Pick up the stone.
- Beat 2: Place the stone in front of the person on the left.
- Repeat for the whole song
Categories
Categories is perfect for introducing the concept of beat, incorporating body percussion and ostinato,
as well as fostering individual singing skills.
Students sit in a circle and clap the beat as a body percussion ostinato (e.g. clap, clap, click, click).
After the first line of the song is sung by the whole class, a chosen category (food, cars, countries, cities, colours etc.) is sung (usually by the teacher).
Going around the circle one at a time, students sing an item from the chosen category, improvising the names of objects in the given category. (Other categories could be types of cars, names of countries or cities, colours etc).
And remember…
Practical games and activities like those above are ideal.
They support an inclusive, sequential and developmental music literacy program to make sure your students really know musical concepts and elements.
Happy gaming, everyone! – Deb
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