notation

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This is a lesson for 5th grade general music. I have been surprised at how challenging reading notation and learning notation has been for the students at my school. It’s just very difficult to teach because students become very restless concerning this type of musical concept. After many failed attempts of this concept I came up with an activity that the students became very engaged in. Teacher Name: Jared Bader Standards: Read/notate, play Concept: reading and notating Objective: The students will be able to notate a scale in order starting from any pitch within the c major scale. 1) review the line notes on the staff by having them hold up their hands, fingers spread. Label each finger from bottom to top as Every Good Boy Does Fine. (I have found that some students can’t spell very well, for example one student thought that the word every started with A, so reaffirming the notes without the corresponding words may be necessary) 2) review the spaces between the fingers as FACE 3) next review the notes on a staff on the board. Also explain that the notes follow the alphabet in order. Some students tried to keep going up the alphabet after G not realizing that there is no H in music and so on so this may take some practice for them to be able to “loop” the alphabet to correspond with the correct pitches. 4) Divide students into groups of 7. Pass out cards to each student in each group. These cards will have a notated pitch on them a.b.c.d.e.f.or g. 5) pull a note name out of a hat and the first group to go will be timed to see how fast they can get into order from that pitch as a starting point. Have a prize for the group that has the fastest time. This can be played many times and will take up a majority of the class period. This is a good lesson for notation but also for teamwork. 6) I then had the students move to instruments. On an overhead I displayed a simple piece for xylophones and had them read it and perform it. This was the first time these students ever tried to read notation and transfer it to an instrument. While they struggled to read there was success and I believe the success was due to the previous notation exercise.


 * //Jared, I liked this lesson a lot! I have a couple of suggestions and ideas for you to think about. First of all, I think that there is usually a tendency for students to try to continue up with the alphabet after reaching G. One thing you could add to help even more with this tendency, is an activity to demonstrate this continual circling of letters. Have the students stand in a line and speak through the alphabet, but when they get to G, they go back to A. Do this a few times just to reinforce this concept.

Also, when you have the students move to the instruments, it may be beneficial to first transfer their focus to the instrument and point out the note names of each bar so they have a visual concept of the letter names before you put the two together to read the staff and play the notes on the instrument. Or you could practice the song first, having students follow along with the notes and simply speaking the names of the notes as they go. Then, have them sing the names of the notes on the correct pitch, then move it to the instrument.

Obviously there is only a certain amount of time in the class period, so fitting all this into one lesson may be hard. It would also be ok to split this up between a couple of days since it is such a difficult concept to learn for many students.

Overall, I really liked your ideas. I thought the lesson was constructed in a way that I could actually teach this to the class. The descriptions of activities were great and the organization was very smooth. It just seemed to flow nicely. I hope these suggestions help you!

-Leslie Butler//**