Kahoot: A fun way to assess

A month or so ago, I learned about an amazing website for assessing students in a very fun way, from my colleague Emily. The website is called Kahoot, and today, I’m sharing how to use it in your classroom, how to create your own game, and more!

Kahoot is a really interactive way for students to show what they know. So how does it work?

If you want to use a game that’s already been made, you can find one by going to kahoot.com and searching. There are many music kahoots already pre-made! If you search aileen1126, which is my username, you’ll find several that I’ve made—one for high do, one for recorder, and several for beginning band.

Once you decide which kahoot you’d like to play, you simply click “play.” Your students can play the game on ipads, smart phones, or Chrome books, either individually or in small group teams. They go to kahoot.it on their device, and they enter the code which has come up on your screen, after you hit the word “play” for the kahoot you want.

Just remember—you are on kahoot.com, and the students are on kahoot.it.

Rhythm Ideas for the Music Room

Looking for fun ideas to practice rhythm in the music room? Are you tired of the same ol', same ol'? Below are four ideas from four of our bloggers!

From Linda:

I don’t know about you but I love creating form using word chains! I especially love using manipulatives that the students can rearrange to create their own composition. So go ahead and grab that stack of beanie babies you use for tone matching and steady beat activities and Let’s Make Music!

Set out 4 beanie babies in a row and have the students echo you. Each beanie baby will receive 2 beats. Rearrange the 4 and have the students echo you again. Continue the process substituting different beanies and changing the order.

Eventually, start speaking the A section “Let’s Make Music” while you are arranging four beanie babies.

Ideas for teaching notes on the treble clef staff

Hello everyone! We are so excited to write the first blog post of our collaborative blog, Sing. Teach. Love. The blog is meant to be a place to share music education ideas for your classroom, written from the perspective of several different teachers and methodologies! For information on all of the teachers collaborating on the blog, see the “about us” section near the top of the page.

For this first blog post, we thought we’d share specific ideas for teaching notes on the treble clef staff! Today, we're writing with five ideas from five bloggers.

From Aileen: I absolutely love the app Staff Wars, which can also be downloaded as a computer program. Whether you have several ipads, one ipad, or one computer, this game is such a fun, interactive way to practice identifying notes on the treble clef staff! The best part of the app is that you can choose only lines, only spaces, only notes on the staff, and extended staff...as well as bass clef and alto clef! I've seen big improvements with the speed with which my students identify notes on the treble clef staff because of this app!

From Tracy: When it comes to teaching the treble clef pitches I am always looking for activities that get kids out of their chairs. One of my favorite activities is a matching game made from dollar store finds. In the teacher section of the dollar store I look for the matching sets of notecards in clever shapes like ketchup and mustard bottles, fish and fishbowls, peanut butter bread/jelly bread and many more.

Take one of the cards in the set and draw a treble staff with notes that spell out a simple word using letters of the musical alphabet. On a coordinating piece, write the word that matches the other piece. After creating a set, mix them up and have students match them up. For this activity, I recommend using a tablecloth, rug or shower curtain on the floor. This defines the space that students work in and keeps the pieces from spreading out across the room.

From Cori: I try to take any opportunity to get kids up and moving, so having a large floor staff is a must. I use painter’s tape directly on the floor, but you could also tape a staff to a shower curtain or an old sheet for easy clean up. (Or maybe you hit the music teacher jackpot with a staff rug!) There are lots of ways to use your staff, but my favorite is an easy bean bag toss. Students work in pairs or in a large group, tossing a bean bag onto the staff and naming the note where it lands.