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!