Music Terms and Symbols

Trying to find different ways of presenting and reinforcing music terms and symbols in an exciting way, proved to be a little more difficult.  Our beginner group had very little knowledge of this concept and was a bit overwhelmed with trying to learn them in a short time.  For the students with previous music lessons it was easier since we could just expand on what they already knew.

Stinky Sock
We began by introducing the basics and then played a game called Stinky Sock (I had seen it mentioned on a Yahoo piano teacher chat group forum).

• Different music terms, symbols, and questions were written on small pieces of paper which were then placed in the very dirty sock.  
• Music played while the students passed (mostly actually threw) the sock around the circle.  
• When the music stopped, whoever had the sock had to take a piece of paper out of the sock and do whatever was on the paper (the paper might say to give an example for the term "forte" and the player would need to talk loudly).  
• Fun instructions were included in with the music terms, symbols, and questions -- hop three times before you can throw the sock or turn around twice before giving the sock to the next person.  
• Anyone who answered incorrectly was out and moved on to a different game designed to work more on music terms.  

Our afternoon group which consisted of 6th and 7th graders had the same game but with a different set of terms.  All of the campers had a great time with Stinky Sock.  It was a favorite and we found that we could use it for other concepts as well.

Memory Game
The card deck from The Whirligig, LLP game Legato Lake Level 2 was used to play a memory game.

We separated the cards into categories.  Approximately half of the terms from the deck were used each time we played so that the games didn't take too long. For our beginning students we started with the more basic terms.  The more experienced group used the half of the deck with more advanced terms.  They were still all playing the same game at the same time so it wasn't obvious to them that there were different levels.

I had worried that it would be much too tame in comparison to the other more active games but the students really enjoyed it.  I think it was good to have a combination of very active and then more calm activities.

Music Category Game
Bradd and I made a Music Outburst type game.   It is a game where teams are given a category and have to "yell" words that relate to the category.

Some examples of our categories were

• name things related to rhythm
• things relating to tempo
• things you would find in a band room 

We had ten terms relating to each category and the students received one point for each that their team got right.  Rules allowed the other teams to capture points by guessing an answer that the currently answering team couldn't get right.  It made for a very animated game and was a good way to reinforce music terms.  

Worksheets
We made many worksheets for the campers to do if they were out of a game early or just to take home and bring back finished for extra points.  I'll explain our scoring method in a later blog entry.

Sally Ritchie