MUSIC IN SECOND GRADE

It was wonderful to meet the 2018-2019 Second Grade: getting to know the new students and meet again the ¨veterans.¨  They are beginning to bond with their new classmates, full of anticipation for the new experiences to come.

We started our musical year with some melodic and rhythmic activities as a point of departure to, as a group, draw conclusions and discuss about this year’s expectations and objectives: the more they are directly involved in making music the better will they learn about music.

The students reviewed the concept of beat by singing some songs and rhymes such as “Apple, Peaches, Pearls and Plums,” while adding body percussions or walking to the beat. In the traditional rhyme “Bounce High, Bounce Low” the children engaged in a game were they had to bounce a ball and pass on it to another classmate to the beat while singing the song. For some of them it was not easy to control the impulse of bouncing the ball their own way. They needed to integrate their listening to their motor response by adjusting to the “steadiness” of the beat while singing the name of the next child they chose. In the context of the fun game, there were many skills involved: self-regulation, listening, singing together, responding to the beat, and thinking skills such as anticipation, decision making and thinking in action. And of course there was a lot of fun and group interaction.

One of the objectives this year is to learn conceptually and label some of their previous musical experiences. This is a fundamental step to music literacy. In this other activity, students learned the concepts of unison and echo singing through the traditional round “Gutten Morgen.”

Students walk while singing in unison.

 Students walk with a partner. One member of the couple sings the first voice and the other one sings an echo response.

I'll see you next week!