Maura FoleyRe Purposed Lesson PlanTE 831

JOHNNY CAUGHT A FLEA

This lesson will reinforce rhythms (specifically short, long, and long rests).

Students will use the SMART Notebook app on iPads to open the presentation and interact with the lesson.

Learners will re-create the rhythm to the song, using the attached audio fi les to check their work.

Using iPads, students will create their own eight beat rhythms and then play them using the attached audio fi le as accompaniment.

LESSON INTRODUCTION

Most people are familiar with musical notes, but students learn those only after using icons to learn rhythms.

Icons are images that represent musical sounds and connect the known (in this case, shapes) to the unknown (rhythms).

Examples:

WHAT IS AN ICON?

Long Note – 2 beats of sound

Long Rest – 2 beats of silence

Short Note – 1 beat of sound

Short Rest – 1 beat of silence

To begin, students will warm up with the teacher.

Warming up is vital to vocal development and serves as an opportunity for the teacher to informally introduce the concepts from the lesson.

For this lesson, my warm-ups included the notes Do, Mi, Sol, and La because those are the four pitches used in the song.

Additionally, the clapping warm-ups used quarter notes (long), eighth notes (short), and quarter rests (long rests) as those are the rhythms used in the song.

THE LESSON - BEGINNING

Next, students learn the song Johnny Caught a Flea.

As a hook, students will play a simple, short circle game using this song.

THE LESSON - BEGINNING

When we move to the board, students will see this page.

Speaker

Do you notice the small speaker in the bottom left corner? When we click that, it plays a recording of me playing the accompaniment to the song. This means I don’t have to go behind the piano and slow down the pace of the lesson!

THE LESSON - MIDDLE

After singing, students will see this page.

THE LESSON - MIDDLE

Again, you’ll notice the small speaker onthe first picture. This is the audio file forthe song again.

This page uses cartoons as icons to represent long and short notes as well as rests. Can you guess which is which?

As students have prior experience with these concepts, they will make the connection with prompting. The big fleas with color are longs, the small fleas are shorts, and the white fleas are rests.

Speaker!

Once students make the rhythmic connection, I will pass out the iPads and have them open the fi le. They will work in groups of 1-2 to recreate the rhythm of the song,

THE LESSON - MIDDLE

Students have the audio file on the last two pages if they need to go back and listento the music as they work.

Once they finish, they can easily take a screen shot of their work to e-mail to me as an assessment.

Students will turn to the third page of the lesson

Once students make the rhythm of the song, they’re ready to compose their own rhythms.

THE LESSON - MIDDLE

Again, there is a speaker on this page, But this music is something I improvised (or made up) to accompany their rhythms.

Once students have created a rhythm, they can play it with the music and exchange their rhythm with other students. At the end, they can e-mail it to me as an assessment.

To finish, we will do a quick review of the terminology from the lesson: Short Note (1 beat of sound), Long Note (2 beats of sound), and Long Rest (2 beats of silence).

Students will do their class jobs and line up to leave.

Rhythm is something that fi rst grade students work on throughout the year, so this lesson would take place near the end of the year after these main concepts have already been covered. The lesson acts as a review or closer to a unit and provides me opportunities to formally and informally assess student work.

THE LESSON - END

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