ELEM 473 Unit Plan: Lesson 3 Janine Means
Rain
Activity: Use a soundscape, percussion instruments, and a
children's book to teach students about rain
Objectives: The students will:Be able to create a soundscape
with a variety of spontaneous body percussion
Use percussion instruments to keep a steady beat
Explore ideas coming from the child's book, Raindrop, Plop!
Learn the rain portion of The Weather Song
Materials Needed: hand drums, single jingle bells, and
shakers
Strategy/Procedure:To begin, I will play a sound file of rain
falling and ask the children what weather they think we are going
to talk about today
I will ask student to do a minute of quiet listening to the rain
sound file and ask them for ideas of how we can make this with our
bodies!After listening, I will take suggestion, and ultimately lay
out how the soundscape will work
I will be the leader and begin with soft wind (rubbing hands
together)
Then, after the kids are grasping and following the movement, I
will move to soft rain (leg pats)
After soft rain, I will move to harder rain (light feet
stomping). I will then move to pouring (harder feet stomps)
I will also have a hand drum to do thunder, which I will
initiate and then hand off drums to a few students
The students who do not perform on thunder will perform on
lightning, which will be a sudden clap of the hands.
The soundscape then will backtrack into light rain. (hard
stomps, light stomps, leg pats, rubbing hands together)
Once the soundscape is over, I will put posters of three words
on the board (splish splash, drip drop, pitter patter) and hand out
jingle bells, shakers, and hand drums to each studentSplish, splash
will teach the students to play half notes
Drip, drop will teach the students to play quarter notes
Pitter, patter will teach the student to play eighth notes
Once we have performed the song, I will ask the students to sit
in a circle and we will read the book Raindrop, Plop!I would read
the book to the students using the la-sol-mi solfeggio
Ask for responses of how they like to play outside and inside
when it is raining
