3rd Grade Compositions

Every year I like to give each grade level composition experiences.  Whether it is group, centers, or individual experiences with composing, I find that it is so impactful.  You can see students putting everything together.  It's the light bulb moment.

In 3rd grade we have talked a lot about time signature, bar lines, measures, note/rest values, etc.  To wrap up the year, I gave my students a chance to compose within guidelines.

I gave each student a small piece of paper (I use colored copy paper cut into quarters).  We review what a measure is and discuss that they will be composing a measure of music in 4/4 time.  Their paper represents the measure, so they don't need to worry about bar lines (for now anyways!).  Before composing I give them a list of notes/rest they can use.  Here are their choices:

• Beamed Eighth Notes
• Quarter Notes
• Half Notes
• Quarter Rests
• Half Rests

Although they already know whole notes/rests I leave these out because they are too easy for a one measure composition.

After composing their measure, I give each student a number (1-4) and ask them to keep it on their fingers.  I use 1-4 because it means ultimately my groups will end with 4-5 kids.  Once every student has their number, I ask them to move to specified locations around my classroom.  After everyone is seated with their group I explain that they will be arranging their measures into a longer composition.

I show them how to place them in 1-4 measure order.  Step 1 is to decide on an arrangement.  They may not pick one until I have seen them playing it together.  Once they have decided, they raise their hands to let me know.  I then tape the composition together and have them move on to Step 2.  In the second step they need to practice in order to play their composition together.  I have them play the entire thing together because I want them to have a longer reading experience.

After completing Step 2, students raise their hands again to let me know they are ready to move on.  Step 3 is picking an instrument to perform on.  Most pick drums but every once in a while some rhythm sticks or boomwhackers sneak their way into a performance.  Step 4 is practicing the composition with instrument.

After everyone has practiced playing their composition with instruments, we perform for each other.

The final step is transferring our composition to traditional notation.  We add the time signature, bar lines and an ending.

This takes a full lesson to complete (45 min.).  In another lesson, we will extend our composition by adding melody and use it as a notation activity with the staff.

3rd Grade: Pease Porridge

The first quarter seems to be mostly review for my kids.  There are a few new things I introduce but more of it is content that we started last year and I find slightly more challenging activities.  This past rotation we reviewed downbeat, bar lines, and measures in 3rd grade.

After working to figure out where the strong beats were in the poem and adding the bar lines, we used body percussion to practice 4 different instrument parts.  For this lesson, I used a SMD melody so that we could review singing these patterns, finding them on the barred instruments and in some classes notating them on the staff (this was an extension that I did not have time for with all classes this rotation).

Melody:
Pease Porridge Hot  Rest  Pease Porridge Cold Rest Pease Porridge in the pot nine days old Rest
S        MM       S               S        MM        S              S        MM       S  S   M   S     M     D

Snap to show the strong beats.
Pat to show where the quarter rests are.
Clap the rhythm of the words.
Sign the SMD pattern in the melody.

Formation:  Seated Circle

I set the instruments we were using around my staff rug.  We used xylophones (SMD), lollipop drums (strong beat), triangles (rests) and rhythm sticks (rhythm).  We transferred the parts to each instrument and then played them altogether while singing the melody.  We rotated clockwise one instrument, reviewed the parts and performed it again.  This process was continued until everyone had a chance to experience playing each part.