Green Belt - Skin and Bones

Skin and Bones is a really tricky song for my recorder players. It is the first time that they are exposed to 3/4 time, dotted half notes, ties and minor keys. They always pause for a beat between each bar so I knew we would have to spend some time on this song.

I spent some time at the beginning of the lesson getting them exposed to the rhythm and the sound of this song. The students were split up into 7 groups (1 group for each verse of the song). I gave them 3 minutes to work with their groups to act out their verse. I set the students up in a semi circle around the outside of the room in the order of the verses. We sang the song and each group performed their actions.

When we took out the recorders I taught them each bar by rote. I played the bar for them twice, they listened and played it back. I had them identify the notes and rhythms and we tried it again. Once we had gone through each bar, I played larger chunks for them to echo back until they could echo back the whole song.

I created a Skin and Bones Tic Tac Toe game on the Smart Board. It was really easy to set up. I drew the grid and copied and pasted some sections of Skin and Bones into each square. I then used the shape tool and created an "O" and an "X". I used the infinite cloning tool so that the students could just drag the X or O onto the square of their choice. I covered up each section of Skin and Bones with a rectangle to make it a bit more challenging. For each rectangle I went to "Properties", clicked on "Object Animation" and changed the "Type" to "Fly Out" and "Occurs" to "When the object is clicked."

The class was split up into two groups .Each group decided who they would send up to represent their team. That lucky student touched a rectangle (which would fly off the page) and would have to play the pattern on that square. If they played it correctly, they dragged the X or the O to that square. The game continued with the representative of the next team taking his/her turn.