Pink Belt - Ode to Joy

Ahhh...the dreaded dotted quarter note and eighth note combo. Not to mention that this tricky rhythm also appears in one of my least favourite songs of all times - Ode to Joy. I needed a lot of help for this lesson which is why I turned to Pianimation for some ideas.

Jennifer Fink from Pianimation used Beat Boards (I used cardstock with hearts printed on them), Silly Putty (I used sticky tack), and rhythm cards (I put the rhythms up on my Smart Board). I really liked her lesson because it was very tactile and hands-on. You should read her complete lesson on the Pianimation website but I will explain how I changed it to fit the rhythm in Ode to Joy (dotted quarter note, eighth note, half note).

Each student was given a beat card and a wad of sticky tack. On the Smart Board I had drawn 4 hearts. As a class we figured out which rhythm would match with each of those beats and I drew a quarter note above each heart. The students then divided their sticky tack into 4 equal balls and placed one ball on each beat. I used a drum, as Jennifer suggested, to tap the beat and the students vocalized "Ta" and tapped each piece of sticky tack to the beat of my drum.

We then turned the last two beats into a half note. The students combined their last two balls of sticky tack into one ball and stretched it from the third heart to the fourth heart. We tapped the sticky tack and slid our fingers from the third heart to the fourth while vocalizing the rhythms.

We talked about other rhythms we knew that were worth one beat but made more than one sound and turned the second heart into a pair of eighth notes, splitting up that piece of sticky tack into two balls. We tapped and vocalized this pattern.

Then came the monster of rhythms - the dotted quarter. The students were already exposed to the dot from the Skin and Bones lesson so we reviewed the function of the dot and transformed our rhythm into a dotted quarter note - eighth note - half-note pattern. We took the first ball from the second beat and combined it with the ball on the first beat and stretched it across to the second heart. We spent a lot of time feeling and vocalizing this rhythm and then we moved to Ode to Joy.

The students came up to the Smart Board and circled the dotted quarter pattern in the song. We said and clapped each pattern and then played it on the recorder using D only and then tried the song as written.