Wednesday, February 3, 2010

A Ram Sam Sam



I was especially pleased with the way today's second grade lesson worked out. We have working with chopsticks on paper to demonstrate the relationship between beat and rhythm (the paper represents the beat while the chops or "tas" and "ta-tes" represent the rhythm lying on top. Today we introduced the concept of accented beats (the blue papers in the picture) and the kids learned the Moroccan folk tune "A Ram Sam Sam". The rhythm pattern of the song is represented here (line 2 and 4 are the same). The kids had a lot of fun learning to "read" the music which helped them sing the song as canon. Check out the video of Ms. Weiss's class posted above to see what I mean.

Third graders completed our work with "Cloud Song" by talking about different ways to construct a complex performance out of a simple piece of music. This an opportunity to look at musical form as a strategy for organizing and expanding music.

Next we will bring our improvisation skills to an examination of the blues.

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