Around the World

My husband and I are in the middle of house hunting right now and things have not been going well. I'm writing this post as a way to get my mind off the house I'd mentally already moved into possibly going down the tubes. 

Source: Picture Paradise

One of the GPS tasks for my intermediates is to hold a long tone for 15 seconds (10 for flute and tuba). This task asks them to think back to when they first started and to see how their stamina has improved since the beginning of the year. 

I had a flashback the other day to playing a math game called "Around the World." I thought I could adapt it to this long tone task. Here's what I came up with:

• Students sit in a circle (we did it today in rows and it worked out just fine)
• The starting student stands in front of the person closest to them
• The teacher counts them in and each student holds their note for as long as possible. (I had them play on the 5th note of the B flat concert scale).
• The student that holds it the longest is the winner and faces off against the next person.

My Grade 8s had a blast with this today! I suppose they liked the competition and a few students who are usually harder to motivate did very well with this challenge. I had to consider what to do with the flutes and percussionists since they are special. Before we started we discussed why the flutes would have a harder time with this and a few flutes even wanted to have a "Flute Face-Off" but we ran out of time. The percussionists played a drum roll on the snare. They automatically won but before the class ended we did a showdown with all the students who had beaten at least two students. One of my alto saxes won it and he and a percussionist faced off against my rock-star Music Itinerant. They lost to him but it was a great activity. 

*** The globe clip art I used came from Picture Paradise. Click here to download it for free. ***

Looking for more Beginning Band games? Check out this post.