1st+Grade+General+Music+Lesson-Rests

This lesson is intended to be the follow-up of a previous lesson. The first graders had been preparing to learn what a rest is, and it was presented to them in the last lesson. They just learned the notation, and have had a lot of previous experience with silent beats in music. Students learned the song "Naughty Pussy Cat", played a game with it, then read notation using cat icons on the SMARTboard. They filled in silent beats with a picture of a cat sleeping and a Z (rest) in the thought bubble. The last part of this lesson was to show them the notation of Beethoven's "Symphony No. 7 Mvt. 2" ( ta ti-ti ta ta x3 ta ti-ti ta Z) and have them clap along and play on imaginary string instruments. The thought was to have them leave class with that song in their head, and reintroduce it right away in the next lesson.

Teaching this lesson went really smoothly because of the transitions. By using the rhythm of one song (Hot Cross Buns) and changing the lyrics so it became another song (Naughty Pussy Cat), I was able to run the class smoothly with little downtime for the students to cause problems. There were no classroom management issues because they were busy working and engaged in the lesson the whole time.