Top 5 Tips for Fun and Easy Music Centers

 

Centers and small group work are a great way to add fun into the music room while getting some one-on-one time with your students. I use centers as a huge part of how I teach recorder (read a bit more about that here), but they can be a great addition to any unit you teach in the music classroom. Here are my top 5 tips to pull off music centers successfully:

Think about noise level

Obviously, setting up 4 separate activities that are all noisy in the same room at the same time could end in disaster. If you have a large room or more than one location (practice rooms or hallway space you can use, for example), there is more leeway. In general, I try to have only 2 of my centers be noisy ones, where kids will be creating some sort of noise singing, playing, or discussing. The other two can be quiet or semi quiet, where kids are making noise none of the time or only some of the time. Examples of great quieter centers are worksheets, listening activities, sorting activities, or composition activities.

Also - try to place your noisier centers away from each other physically so kids don’t feel the need to make things even louder by competing with the noise of the other center!

 

Think about groupings

I try to have my students in groupings of 6 kids maximum. If you teach larger classes, you can set up, for example, 6 centers but only 3 activities (center 1 and 4 are the same, center 2 and 5 are the same, center 3 and 6 are the same), and have students only rotate through half the activities to facilitate those smaller group sizes.

I usually make my center groups mostly randomly and mix them up quite often, but I do sometimes shuffle kids around when thinking about who they will work well with, or if certain kids have adults who support them in the room, it can be nice to have students who need the extra eyes on them in the same group as the student who is being supported.

 

Train kids on games beforehand

Especially with younger students, any game we are introducing in centers I make sure to play with them beforehand in a full class setting, OR anchor myself at the center with a new activity…

 

Anchor yourself, or don’t!

That leads perfectly to the thought of anchoring yourself at one center – should you stay at just one center or move around? Both strategies can work well. In general, I roam between centers when I have younger students in centers, or students that aren’t as experienced with the concept. As they get older and more confident with the format of centers, I tend to anchor myself at one center and take the opportunity to get some one-on-one assessment time. Either way, be thoughtful about what strategy you choose.

 

Make kids accountable

Making sure kids were actually doing all the work at these centers I set up was something I struggled with when I started using centers. The ultimate thing I have found that helps is having a center that requires something to be handed in or submitted, keeping track of those submissions, and getting kids who didn’t submit/didn’t do well to complete it again! For example, if I have a note reading worksheet in my centers on Monday, when I see the kids on Wednesday I have a list of the kids who were present on Monday but didn’t complete the worksheet – they will be doing the worksheet before they can join the rest of the class in the game we are playing that day. You don’t have to do that many times before kids start getting things done!

Other things that can help with this are roaming around the room and checking in with centers if you are not anchored at one of them, and if you are anchored at one, sitting in a way that you can see as many of the other centers as possible and call out kids who are clearly off task. If you are assessing at the center you are anchored at, you might also recommend to the kids how other center’s activities might help them with your assessment. For example: “I noticed you were having trouble with the strumming pattern on this song, make sure you get your practice in over at center 1 where you’re playing Roll and Strum!” This helps kids make connections between the different centers and how they’re all working toward making them a better musician. 

 

 

 

5 Engaging Listening Activities for Any Piece of Music

 

Listening is a core activity in music classes, but it can be tempting to stick with the same old activities or generic listening worksheets when presenting music to kids. Here are 5 of my favourite listening activities that can be used with any piece of music.

1.    Musical Drawings

Having students draw what the music makes them think of is a great activity for younger learners, especially when listening to programmatic works. You can expand on this activity with older kids by having kids work in small groups – each student begins their own picture, and then after a certain amount of time they pass their picture to another group member. That group member then continues adding to the picture, before passing it to another group member. Kids are always interested to see what pictures their classmates have started and to add their own spin on it!

2.    Show the Form

Depending on the clarity of the form in the piece, activities where students need to show the form can be used with students as young as Kindergarten all the way up to middle school. Students can show the form by using different paper shapes or other manipulatives to represent the different sections of the music, or by making different movements for different sections (check out this post where I describe using this activity with a movement from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons!)

3.    Listen and Roll

What is it about dice that instantly get students interested in an activity? Listen and Roll assigns 6 different questions to each of the numbers on a standard die. Once the music is on, students roll to find what question they will answer. This is a good activity to tailor to certain aspects of music you may be learning about in class, or as a good review or knowledge check to see what students remember from previous years. If you want premade questions and answer sheets, I have a listen and roll set available in my TPT store!

4.    Move to the Beat

Although this is a fairly common activity for younger students, it can also be used for students in grade 2 – 4 by making the prompts more complex. Possibilities include: instead of just stepping to the beat, what movement would suit this music to do to the beat? Can you show the dynamics as you continue moving to the beat? Can you combine your beat movements with showing the form?

5.    Cover Compare

I love doing this activity with my middle schoolers, but it can be done down to early elementary grades as well. Students can compare and contrast two different recordings or covers of the same piece of music. This can work on their detailed listening skills if the recordings are quite similar, or be a fun way to see how different two groups can make one song sound! The most success I have ever had with this activity is using the song Bubble Gum by the band Pamyua – they have a pop version and a traditional Inuit version of the same song, and kids can hardly believe it’s the same musicians performing the same song!

I hope you can use some of these activities to add some interest to your listening lessons!

3 Great Winter Movement Activities For Music Class

 

If you teach in a cold climate, you know how wild kids can get on cold winter days when they can’t go out for recess to burn off all that energy! On those days it’s more important than ever to get kids moving in music class, for their sake and for yours! Here are three of my favourite movement activities for those freezing cold days!

 

Write the Room

Grades 1 – 5

Write the rooms can be a great combination of movement and education! In a write the room activity, flashcards working on whatever skill (rhythm reading, note reading, etc) are spread around the room or school. Each flashcard has a picture on it that matches a picture on the student’s response sheet. Students go around the room finding the flashcards and either copying down what they see or answering a matching question beside the matching picture. My Winter Rhythm Write the Room is a favourite activity of mine to pull out when the kids have had one too many indoor recesses and just need to move!

 

Form Movement Compositions

Grades 1 – 4

I love getting my students to make up their own movements to illustrate the form of a piece. This activity can work with any music at any time of year, but a particularly good piece to use in winter is Vivaldi’s “Winter”. Have students make their own movements for the two distinctive form sections of the song – the quieter, almost foreboding full ensemble sections and the wild soloist sections. Their movements can echo the difference in sections – small, subtle movements for the ensemble and then large bombastic movements for the soloist. Definitely a way for them to get the energy out!

 

Snowball Fight

Grades 2 – 6

Snowball fights aren’t allowed at our school, so it always piques my students’ interest when I say we’re having a snowball fight in music class. All you need for this activity is any sort of flashcard (rhythms, notes on the staff, etc) that you can print onto plain white paper. Print them out, then crumple them up into “snowballs”. I separate kids onto 2 sides of the room divided by a wall of music stands, and then play some music. While the music plays, the kids can toss the snowballs back and forth at each other. When the music stops, I pull 2 names on each team. Those kids need to pick up a snowball, uncrumple it, and read the rhythm/note name/answer the question on the paper. If they get it right, that’s a point for their team, and the snowball fight begins again!

 

I hope some of these activities help your students beat the winter wiggles!