#21: 3 FUN Ways to Teach Musicality on Zoom
May 12, 2020Tired of Zoom yet?
All things zoom.. that's where we're all at right now. Currently I'm teaching piano that way and have even played a company ballet class that way, it's not ideal! Especially for the teacher.. It's crazy hard to discern if your students are being musical at all, with the delays of internet and zoom time. By this time (2 months into Covid-19 social isolation), you know this full well and are likely nodding your head emphatically!
We know that music education and training is beneficial for all of our students, my piano ones and your ballet ones! There is a ton of information out there supporting the value of music education for our kids and their development, for example; take a look here on the Academy of Music and Dance website.
This webpage has put together an incredible list of benefits from the study of music and dance. It's inspiring.. confidence, cognitive ability, problem solving, math, SAT scores, conceptualization, helps pull up under-achievers, emotional maturity, coordination, literacy and sooo much more! It's exciting but, now during zoom, it is especially discouraging since it feels like we can't teach musicality well and really, without musicality what are our students really doing? Various coordination skills?
I've put together a couple of fun ways to encourage your students to listen to music more astutely.. Please enjoy!
3 Ways to Teach/Encourage Musicality on Zoom
A) Creative Movement Music: For the last 5 minutes of class, have your students listen to a piece of music they haven't danced to recently, or ever, and then, play it a second time and ask them to move creatively to it.
Obviously your more reserved students will not likely do much at home in front of their parents, BUT, your more uninhibited dancers will likely embrace the freedom of dancing however they like for a bit! Because you already know the music, even with the delay in sound, you will know what they are responding to, in the music. Ideally, pick music that is VERY vibrant in it's variations so that it can really inspire a huge range of movements!
B) Clap or Freeze Game: (only after you've taught the 4/4 and the 3/4 time signature)
- Grab an album of any music, Disney, Jazz, a ballet class album, etc.
- Tell your students to ONLY CLAP (or move) when the music they hear is a 4/4 ( anything duple meter).. OR, only if it's a 3/4 (triple meter), you choose.
- Pick a meter that is easily discernible for their budding musical ears, like duple or triple. (That way they're just listening for one of two rhythms. 1 + 2 + 3 + OR 1 + uh 2 + uh 3 + uh.) Stay away from fancy like 6/8s and polkas, etc. Keep it simple!
- I'd love to see your students be able to identify the meter (ie. By clapping or Freezing) within 8 dancer counts. You should be able to change pieces of music a lot in the last few minutes of class!
- Student who gets the most right in a class, wins the Most Musical Award for that class! You could even keep a chart with stickers and track who is winning the most awards over time. Student who fills the chart first, wins a free $5 Starbucks card or something like that!
C) Copy Cat: So, remember when you were teaching your little peanuts musicality and patterns in the studio? You and your dancers would all hold hands and then skip in the circle? Maybe 8 counts one way and then 8 counts the other way, then 4 counts, 4 counts, etc? This game is a play on that! You clap a specific rhythm and they have to copy you! Copying works because you're not trying to do it at the same time!
- Clap 8 bars of beats of a 4/4 and then they copy you.
- Clap 4 bars of beats of a 4/4 and then they copy you.
- Clap 2 bars of beats of a 4/4 and then they copy you!
Try this with bars as well! Clap on 1 and then count on beats 2, 3, 4. Then clap on 1 again before only counting on beats 2, 3, 4. This could also work with the 3/4 or the 6/8.
If you found those ideas inspiring and would love more resources, I am really happy to tell you about an amazing program that I've been creating for ballet teachers to use called Rhythms and Beats for Ballet!
Rhythms and Beats for Ballet
Each time signature package includes an awesome collection of resources designed to teach, refresh and reinforce the training of that time signature. As a ballet teacher, you'd be able to use and reuse these resources for MANY years to come!
All the PDFs and videos inside of each individual time signature'd package are relevant to that time signature! The program is designed to be consumed and used by a wide range of ages (4-14 yr old give or take a year or 2).
Each Rhythms and Beats for Ballet includes:
- Full length (approx.14 minute long) 'The Whole Story' fun, interactive and instructional video teaching the time signature. In this video, your students will learn how to clap the beats, the bars, the dancer counts and how to move to the rhythm!
- Shorter (4 minutes) 'Short and Sweet' video just reviewing and guiding the students through the clapping of the beats, bars and moving to the rhythm.
- Crosswords
- Word searches
- Colouring sheets
- Fill in the Blank story page (in the 3/4 only)
- A teacher guide to give you ideas on how to use the resources together
I have been hugely involved with assisting ballet teachers while they teach music to their students in ballet studios around Calgary for the past 14 years and am beyond thrilled with how the Rhythms and Beats for Ballet has 'turned out'! I KNOW that you will enjoy using the program, not only now as a screen share on zoom or emailing the video link to your students, but also in the future when things settle back to some kind of 'normal' again!
Please check it out if you're ready for some fresh materials to use with your students!
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me on Facebook or via email.
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