The latest episode of Teaching Tips and Tea is about preparing your students for rhythmic dictation tasks aurally and visually. Grab a cup of tea and watch the latest episode!
Video Transcription
Hi music colleagues, thanks for dropping in.
I wanted to share with you today how best to prepare your students for a rhythmic dictation task. First, we need to prepare them aurally and then visually. So the first step is to do an echo, the students are going to clap and say the rhythmic syllables after you, and then they’re going to do the clever echo. So reminding them of their musicians clapping. My turn [clapping]. So you do eight or so echoes, then the clever echo process which is very, very important in assessing whether your students are actually ready. It’s the formative assessment again that is so important. So I will clap the rhythm and give the students four beats to think about what it was and then ask them to clap it back and say the rhythm syllables [clapping]. Thinking time. So the clever echo process is really a dictation in its own right, but it’s not the written or summative assessment that we need to be able to do the students reports.
The next step is to do a visual confirmation, we perform a rhythm pattern visually. We then do a which one and ask the students to show their learning which one was it that they saw. Ask the students to close their eyes so that you can then see who is authentically on board or who really will not be able to do this process because they’re unable to analyse what they hear. So the students are now ready for the written task and remember to take the tempo slowly and keep a steady beat on one hand. If you’re using minims or rests, then I suggest you use a recorder or something that has a long sound so that you can show the absence of sound or a long sound. So I hope that tip’s really helpful.
Happy teaching!
