Georgia Standards

South Carolina Standards

Key Vocabulary

Materials

• Plane figure cards (individual cards with one figure on each) 
• Large paper and markers 
• Visual of four 8-beat phrases
• Visual of text for section A of the rondo to be displayed after chant is learned
• Sound source (iPod, iPhone, computer, speakers, etc.) 
• Recording of musical composition in rondo form (or create your own using found sounds or body percussion)

Instructional Design

Opening/Activating Strategy

• Perform two sounds, some of which are the same (e.g., clap-clap) and some of which are different (e.g., tap-clap). 
• Have students identify what they hear as the same or different. 
• Explain that students will be focusing on hearing parts that are the same and parts that are different.
• Play a musical composition in rondo form, challenging students to listen for repeated sections. 
• To help students hear the same and different sections, you may want to have them keep the beat one place for the A sections, a different place for the B section, and a different place for the C section (e.g., A = pat legs, B = clap, C = tap shoulders).
• Identify the form heard in composition as rondo form. Use letters to help students understand the same and different sections (e.g., A B A C A). Explain that students will now become composers of their own piece to illustrate rondo form.

Work Session

• Have students establish a simple 2- or 4-beat body percussion ostinato (e.g., pat-clap or pat-clap-clap-clap). 
• While students perform the body percussion ostinato, teach the following chant by rote (teacher speaks, students echo). You may also want to have a visual displayed to aid reading. 

Plane figures are around us everyday. 

Just count the sides and angles to see what’s on display. 

Vertices and angle size, they’re important too, 

So let’s gather ‘round and see what you can do! 

• To facilitate student success in learning the chant aurally, begin by speaking the entire chant, then speak the first phrase (first 8 beats) and have students echo. 
• Continue speaking each phrase and having students echo. 
• Then combine two phrases (16 beats) and have students echo. 
• Once students are comfortable with 8- and 16-beat phrases, speak the entire chant. 
• This becomes the A section of the class composition. 

*Teacher note: If maintaining the body percussion ostinato while saying the chant is too difficult, have one group perform the ostinato while the other group speaks.

• Analyze the structure of the chant (32 beats long with the last word on the last beat 7). A visual such as follows may be helpful in guiding students’ analysis. 

• To help students understand the chant’s length and structure, point to each number while speaking the chant. 
• Analyze the rhyme scheme of the chant, marking on the visual of the chant to          facilitate understanding. 
• Teachers may want to use one color marker for “everyday” and “display” and a different color marker for “too” and “do.”
• Divide students into small groups. Give each group a card with a plane figure on it. 
• Have students create a chant about their plane figure (rectangle, triangle, square, trapezoid, quadrilateral, hexagon, etc.). 
• Their chant should be the same length and use the same rhyme scheme as the A section (e.g., 4 phrases of 8 beats each; rhyming words at the end of phrases 1 and 2; different rhyming words at the end of phrases 3 and 4).
• Have ample space in the room so student groups can move far enough apart during the creating process to enable careful listening and minimize distraction from other groups. 
• Have students write their chants (text only) on large paper. Writing their composition in 4 lines may facilitate understanding of the 4 phrases. 
• Combine compositions with the original chant to create a rondo form. The original chant is the A section while the student creations become the alternating sections.

Closing Reflection

• Have students find a “rondo” pattern in the classroom (e.g., poster - wall - poster - window - poster = A B A C A). 
• Have students describe rondo form in their own words. 
• Challenge students to find other examples of rondo form in music.

Assessments

Formative

Teachers will assess students’ learning by observing students’ engagement and participation while the class identifies the same and different sections of music, performs a body percussion ostinato to accompany speech, identifies the rhyme scheme of a chant, and creates sentences and say them over 8 beats.

Summative

CHECKLIST

• Students can create and accurately perform an original speech composition about a plane figure using the prescribed form. 
• Students can create and accurately perform a body percussion ostinato to accompany the speech composition.

Differentiation

Acceleration: 

• Have students record their creations. 
• Have students create additional sections about different plane figures.
• Challenge students to create and notate simple melodies for their text. 
• Have students listen to music in rondo form to discern the different sections. 
• Have students transfer their spoken text to body percussion (e.g., clap the rhythm of the words rather than speaking the words).
• Experiment with and discuss various textures in music. For example, have half the students maintain the ostinato while the other group performs their chant on body percussion; then have only the chant performed on body percussion. Discuss what happens to the texture as other parts are added or deleted.
• To connect to dance, have students create movement compositions to share while they say their chant.

Remediation: 

• • Rather than creating a rondo, have students work together to create one section about a plane figure. The form then becomes A B A (with the A section being the chant initially presented and the B section being the newly created chant).
  • If writing a 32-beat chant is too challenging, use the first half of the chant as the A section, thereby making the chant 16 beats long. Alternating sections then will be 16 beats long (rather than 32 beats).  
  • If keeping the body percussion ostinato on two levels (pat-clap) is challenging, have students keep the beat on one level (e.g., pat legs).

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

*This integrated lesson provides differentiated ideas and activities for educators that are aligned to a sampling of standards. Standards referenced at the time of publishing may differ based on each state’s adoption of new standards.

Ideas contributed by and updated by: Maribeth Yoder-White 

Revised and copyright:  June 2024 @ ArtsNOW

Georgia Standards

South Carolina Standards

Key Vocabulary

Materials

• Assortment of unpitched instruments (or found sound objects like an empty can or tapping two pencils together)  
• Writing utensils  
• Paper (or individual white boards) for students
• Fraction cards

Instructional Design

Opening/Activating Strategy

• Have students listen to various classroom instruments, body percussion, and/or found sounds and label them as same and different. 
  • For example, perform two claps and have students identify these as “same.” Tap a chair once and a water bottle once and have students identify as “different.”
• Explain to students that timbre is the component of a tone that causes different instruments to sound different from each other, even when playing the same note; for example, instrumental timbre and vocal timbre.
  • Extend the opening to have students listen to various sounds performed on classroom instruments, body percussion, and/or found sound and describe the timbres, grouping instruments into families. 
  • Families could be woods, metals, and drums (or other “families,” such as if sounds were produced by tapping, scraping, or shaking as appropriate).

Work Session

• Model the “sound detective” game. 
  • Have students draw a short horizontal line on their whiteboard or blank paper. 
  • Using a steady beat, play four of the same sounds on the same instrument. 
    • Have students write the number “4” on their whiteboard under the line. 
      • Identify this as the denominator indicating that there were four total sounds. 
    • Lead students to understanding that 4 identical sounds were heard; thus, to represent the sound fractionally, they would write a 4 on top of the line as well (that is, 4 of the 4 sounds were the same). 
      • Identify top number as numerator.
• Follow this same process for additional 4-beat patterns, changing the number of “different” sounds and challenging students to represent these sounds fractionally. 
  • For example, if 3 of the 4 beats were played on a metal instrument, the sound could be represented as 3/4. 
• Explore other ways of making sounds different from each other (e.g., loud and soft sounds—dynamics). 
• Divide students into small groups. Distribute fraction cards to groups. 
  • Have students create a rhythm representing the fraction on their card and perform for peers. 
  • Have classmates identify what is heard. The denominator will need to be identified beforehand.

ELA Extension:

• Use children’s poems to further explore fractions. 
  • Examples: 
    • “Mary Had a Little Lamb” has two lines that include rhyming words, so 2/4 lines (or 1/2) of the poem uses rhyming words. 
    • “Rain, Rain, Go Away” has four lines that use rhyming words, so 4/4 of the lines of the poem use rhyming words. 
  • To aid musical skill development, have students play the rhythm of the poem on their instruments.
  • Assign rhyming words to the same instrument so students make the connection between the sounds in the words and the sounds the instrument makes.
  • Suggested poems include:

Rain, Rain go away.                            Mary had a little lamb.

Come again another day.                     Its fleece was white as snow.

All the children want to play.             And everywhere that Mary went,

Rain, rain, go away.                           The lamb was sure to go.

Cock-a-doodle-doo,                           A wise old owl lived in the oak;

My dame has lost her shoe,               The more he saw the less he spoke.

My master’s lost his fiddling stick,   The less he spoke the more he heard.

        Sing cock-a-doodle-doo.           Why aren’t we all like that wise old bird?

Closing Reflection

• Facilitate a class discussion reflecting on the process. 
• Ask students how music helped them understand fractions.
• Ask students if they can think of other things from the lesson that they could represent in terms of fractions. 
  • Examples could include three out of four students liked the sound of tapping on a can better than tapping two pencils together.

Assessments

Formative

Teachers will assess students’ learning by observing whether students can identify body percussion, found sound, and/or unpitched percussion instrument sounds as the same and different and whether students can count sounds and represent them with numbers.

Summative

CHECKLIST

• Students can create music to accurately represent fractions.
• Students can identify and write fractions based on musical examples.

Differentiation

Acceleration: 

• Challenge students to use higher denominators (beats in the musical composition) and more than two types of instruments.
• Students can create their own compositions and then represent them by writing the equation showing the addition of all fractions in their composition.
  
• Have students write poetry using rhyme schemes illustrating fractions. 
• Divide students into pairs. Have them create rhythms representing the two fractions they are holding. Have classmates identify the two fractions heard. 

Remediation:

• Have students work with a partner to write numbers describing the sounds heard. 
• Have students work with a partner to identify rhyming words.
• Perform body percussion and other sounds in front of students so they can see and hear the same and different sounds and sound sources.

*This integrated lesson provides differentiated ideas and activities for educators that are aligned to a sampling of standards. Standards referenced at the time of publishing may differ based on each state’s adoption of new standards.

 Ideas contributed and updated by:  Maribeth Yoder-White

 Revised and copyright:  June 2024 @ ArtsNOW