If you're looking for a fresh way to practice rhythms - be it through reading, performing or composition - then why not add some fruit into your musical diet? I got this fantastic idea from the wonderful Aileen Miracle at the recent Step Up conference in Brisbane. Students are given a number of artificial fruits and must arrange them to make a four beat pattern. They then speak their fruit pattern and try to work out their pattern is in rhythm names. Try to include a variety

Presenting taa & ti-ti as the first rhythmic concepts students will add to their growing vocabulary is an important step, and is a lesson I always look forward to giving. In order to present taa & ti-ti to your students, they need to have a couple of things down-pat first: 1. They must be able to perform a number of folk songs which contain these rhythms and they must be able to do them accurately without the help of a teacher. 2. They have to be able to keep the beat in

Teaching Tika-tika is perhaps one of my favourite units of Primary Music! The students are becoming more familiar with the process of discovering new rhythms and they now have enough in their vocabulary to make their compositions and improv more varied and rewarding and you can really see a maturity start to come into the way they treat the music. Now that they have these cool sounds to play with, they're starting to feel like real musicians! Some of my favourite songs, games

So you've just made conscious taa and ti-ti. Now what? Instead of charging full speed into the next rhythmic discovery, it's important to give your students the chance to put their new knowledge into practice and play around with their newfound rhythmic friend. It's also important for you as a teacher to be able to assess that they have in fact fully understood this new concept. There are 6 broad forms that this practice may take: Performing, Reading, Writing, Composing, Impr

Today I'd like to talk about a fantastic fun activity that makes for a great summative assessment at the end of a unit - and also a great end-of-term activity for the kids! "Scoot!" is an activity I have nabbed from the wonderful Aileen over at Mrs. Miracle's Music Room (check it out if you haven't already) It involves posting a series of short prompt cards at various locations around the classroom. All of them have quick and easy questions that practice a certain element and

We are living in a digital age and our classrooms are forever adapting to reflect this. Whether you teach in a well-resourced school where each child has access to their own iPad or laptop or whether you're slugging your own supplies along from home, making the effort to include technology in your classroom is highly worthwhile (and, in many schools, a mandatory part of the classroom). Below is a list of several apps and computer programs I have found tremendously useful, rel

This is Mr. Fuzzy. Mr. Fuzzy is currently looking a little worse for wear. This is because it is the end of the school year and Mr. Fuzzy's main job during term time is to be thrown at an interactive whiteboard. Now, Mr. Fuzzy does not mind this, in fact he does his duty very well! Because he knows that he is helping students with their rhythm-reading skills. I use Mr. Fuzzy in conjunction with these wonderful IWB sets by Aileen Miracle of Mrs. Miracle's Music Room (They form