MusicKit
the Virtual Music Classroom

Music Activities and Resources for Kids and Teachers


Teaching Music and Music Making for the Classroom Teacher
Some techniques for teaching the basics of primary music and integrating meaningful music into other subject areas usable by teachers with no music training



Classroom Beat Activities: 2-4

that integrate Music and Math

Probably the easiest place to begin with young children and the beat is in various chanting activities. The easiest of these are counting activities. The beat is a very important and often overlooked way of making numbers concrete to children.

ACTIVITY 2 : Counting the Beat:
To begin set a slow beat as above and have the whole class join in. Have the children count as high as they can in unison to each beat. Stop the activity when you hear any hesitation or straying off the beat, i.e., lack of hand-to-mouth coordination! At first it may take the children aback to find that they have strayed from the beat long before they reach the end of the numbers they think they know. This activity can be quite fun if done only once a day or so and if the children are challenged to push their record of how high they can count without losing the beat. Establish more exacting standards of hand-to-mouth coordination, gradually. When the challenge becomes easy, you can increase the speed of the beat slightly.
ACTIVITY 3 : Beat relay
As this becomes easy you can make a 'relay' of this kind of counting by keeping a slow beat and counting off individually one by one around the class, stopping to begin again whenever the beat is dropped by someone. Again records could be made and broken by challenging students to get to higher and higher numbers. In order that the beat keeping aspect of the activity be effective, it is crucial that the teacher be rigourous in enforcing adherence to a beat in these activities, . It is also important to be supportive of all students in trying. No one should be blamed for 'blowing it.' Once the beat is lost, simply stop the activity without comment and either begin again or move on, as appropriate. Again keeping track of how high they count before losing the beat will make the activity more challenging and fun.

The possibilities to this kind of counting activity are endless. The activity can be made more complex as children become good at it or in higher grades. More and more complex beat patterns as mentioned above (slap lap, clap hands, snap fingers; slap lap, clap hands, snap finger) might be used during the activity. The teacher or an assigned child might point to individuals at random to continue counting where the last stopped. Each individual might be asked to count pointing to the next person on the last beat of his/her counting. The counting itself could be counting by 5's, 10's, 2s, 3s etc. etc. But keep that beat going!
ACTIVITY 4 : Beat relay in measured metre
Here is a variation of this last technique that can lead to higher level musical and mathematical outcomes: Have each individual student or group of students count for a given number of numbers (4 is a good number to start with, but any number can be used. Using 4, the counting would go: "1, 2, 3, 4," pass on to "5, 6, 7, 8," to "9, 10, 11, 12," etc.). Pass the counting around as described above emphasizing the first beat of each person or groups counting. Once the activity becomes fairly easy and a high number is reached consistently, you might wish to discuss the pattern of the last number before the accented beat in each group counts. The last number in each group counts will describe the multiplication tables for the number decided on. In our example these are 4, 8, 12 etc.

4 is a good number to start with because North American music is often felt in a metre of 4 beats and so it comes quite naturally. Metres of 2 and three are also common, but the change to a new group comes so fast in those groupings that they are more difficult. Remember to keep the beat slow and even!

NOW we are beginning to see some of the power of this activity in teaching mathematics beyond counting AND music. With these kind of repetitive patterns we are introducing some musical concepts you might feel uncomfortable with if you were just asked to teach the concept. In this activity you are not only teaching multiplication, you are teaching the groupings of beats called "meter" in music. Yet this is, I hope you agree, a simple enough activity for you to teach .
(If you do this activity in groupings of 6 you are teaching something musicians call "simple compound meter" - compound, because you will tend to feel the beat in two groups of 3, simple because the groupings you feel are equal - 2 groups of three. Presto-division!).

The patterns developed above are quite easy for kids when they come to understand the activity. In
music, the next activity is thought of as being more complex than the last. However, mathematically it is even simpler. We are going to describe addition in this activity.

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Intro to THE BEAT

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