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!