Objectives were for students to hear and respond appropriately to the differences of high/low and fast/slow. In addition, I wanted to set up expectations for behavior during movement activities for the rest of the year.
I began with the students sitting in a row facing me like we have done for several weeks. The specific parameters I gave them were where they could go in the room, where they couldn't go, and how they would look when they were in scatter spots. I showed them how to appropriately make sure they had enough room. I modeled everything while walking around the room. I also made it clear that once in their spot, they were going to stay there. No locomotor for our first movement lesson.
The most important instruction was that they should move when they hear the music and they should freeze when the music stops. This helped them focus on the music and on the lesson instead of getting distracted.
I then sang "Find your own space" (d-m-s-d) to release them from the carpet squares. They ran. I had them all walk back to their carpet squares. We reviewed our classroom rule to walk and not run. Then I sang the cue again, we tried again, and were successful.
I played the piano alternating between low and high. After the first two examples, I gave them the specific direction to make it look different if the sound was high or if it was low. Some wonderful responses came as a result. Then we did fast and slow. I reinforced to stay in one spot, but explore different movements with the body. I periodically commented on any expressive movements that I saw that were really nice or that showed risk-taking.
This simple lesson plan on exploring movement with basic building blocks of music was really successful as a first lesson in listening to and responding to music as well as a first lesson learning about finding our own space in music class. I was blown away by the expressive quality of their movements and can't wait to plan more movement lessons. Yay!
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