Vocal Exploration Ideas

Vocal exploration is a great way to help primary students find their head voices. For me, it’s been an important step to help students feel comfortable singing. Here are some ways I use it in my classroom.

The Squiggle, by Carole Lexa Schaefer

This is a cute book about a girl who finds a string and uses it to create all kinds of interesting shapes. We take strings (you could also use a jump rope) and use them to create the pathway we will follow with our voices. As an extension, you can turn this into a partner game. One student sets up the string and the other student performs it. I also use cards to have students practice with a certain dynamic or tempo.

Moldable Flower

Man, do I love the Dollar Tree. I picked up this genius toy and it made my day! The flower stem has flexible metal inside, so we start at the flower’s face and use the stem as our pathway. If you have enough, this could also be a partner activity like the string.

Teachers Pay Teachers

There are plenty of vocal explorations PDFs for sale at Teachers Pay Teachers, though there are some great free ones too. I like this free PDF with an alien theme from Mrs. Ford’s Melodies.

Here is an example of a SMART presentation I've made, using clip art from Creative Clips.

SMARTboard Ideas

I like to create my own vocal exploration activities. It’s actually very easy to do! I start with two pieces of clip art that go together (candy and a bag, bookworm and a book, guitar and a case, etc.) and use the pen to create a line between the two. I lock the image on the left and the line, and leave the image on the right alone so it can travel on the pathway as students perform it. You can also leave the space blank so students have space to create their own pathway with the pens.

Here are some of my favorite options for clip art, all from Teachers Pay Teachers:

·         Artifex, which has some great music clip art

·         Dancing Crayon has a wide variety of instrument clip art

·         Educlips is a huge store with lots of variety

·         Creative Clips has a wide range of clips and awesome freebies

·         LovinLit is a good source of backgrounds and frames, if you want it to be fancy.

Happy exploring!

Using Memes in the Music Room: Part Two

See the first part here.

I love using memes in my class. Kids are definitely exposed to them and love seeing ones they recognize. They are also a great and sneaky way to get kids to make connections. In order to get the joke, kids have to understand the concept the meme is about and be able to apply it to the given situation. Despite having a reputation of being only relevant to teenage geeks, memes are actually great learning tools.

About a year ago, I was spending a good portion of my free time on the internet, scrolling through any music meme I could get my hands on so I could use them with my kids. Kids loved them. The problem I kept running into was that what I found didn’t always fit what I wanted. I never made my own, though, because that just seemed so HARD.

I have a message for my past self: making a meme that is exactly what you want takes significantly less time than google image (or Pinterest) searching for hours and hours.

It’s surprisingly easy. All you have to do is go to a generator (I like this one) and search for a template image to use. Then you add your text.

I can haz piano?

Here’s what I did to make this one: I knew I wanted a meme for the dynamic piano, so I searched for “library” and a cute cat came up. Add in some text and you are done! If you need a specific picture, you can download it to your computer and upload it to the generator. I promise, it is super easy.

I use them as a quick, 1 minute review of our previous lesson’s concepts. Kids have to explain (in a complete sentence) what the joke is and what the term used in the meme means. It’s much more engaging, and more rigorous, than just repeating definitions.

Here are a few I’ve created so far.

My kids struggle with "gradually" getting louder

MEDIUM tempo! Get it? *ba dum dum ch*

I hope you have fun creating memes! Please feel free to share in the comments!