My fourth graders spend the majority of the year demonstrating all of the musical skills and concepts that they have previously learned in music class by applying those concepts to the recorder. These are concepts that they have learned in other ways, and I attempt to begin a transfer of learning on the recorder with the students. Students play the recorder from October-February of 4th grade.
The first concept that I would like my fourth graders to understand and demonstrate on the recorder is rhythm. Previous to recorders, my students have played all kinds of percussion instruments with different rhythms, including pitched xylophone instruments, but they have never played a wind instrument. My students have learned to play quarter notes, eighth notes, half notes, dotted notes, and whole notes and their corresponding rests. The application of the change from using the hands or feet to demonstrate the rhythms to using the tongue is typically a new challenge. To promote the development of rhythm more fully on the recorder, students must learn to play the rhythm with their tongues. Therefore, I isolate the skill that I would like the students to acquire by taking away the other challenges. On the recorder, students have to think about moving their fingers to the appropriate fingering, breathing, and articulation at the same time. First, we clap and count the rhythm, which we already know how to do from previous learning. Next, we leave the recorders in our laps and speak the rhythm on "tu" while clapping the rhythm (instead of saying the numbers of the counts). Third, we do not speak, but just tongue the rhythm with air. Finally, we play the rhythm on a single pitch on our recorders. After students have tried all of these steps and at least 80% of students are getting it correctly, we start applying the different pitches to the actual music.
The second concept that I would like my fourth graders to understand is the relationship between singing the melody and playing it. Many of my students do not make the connection that the recorder music should sound like the song when it is sung. They are not audiating the music as they play on the recorder. To promote the development of this concept, I always have students learn the songs that we will play on our recorders with singing and lyrics. Then, we cover up words and hum in their places. For example, on "Merrily We Roll Along," we might sing "Merrily we roll ______" and hum the blank space. They love this game. We take away more words and hum in their places until we are humming the entire song. Then, we hold our recorders and hum the song while we do the fingers. Then, we stop humming and blow air. Sometimes, I add a step where I sing the song while the students play on their recorders. I always encourage the students to sing the songs in their heads while they play them to help them determine if they are making mistakes or not.
The third concept that I would like my fourth graders to understand about recorders in the relationship between the written pitches and their fingerings. Many of my fourth graders know their note names very well when we start recorders because they have played them and sung them on other instruments and with other songs so often prior to recorder. The problem comes for them in connecting the note names with particular fingerings. I can understand why this takes so many steps, because the students must connect the note name with the fingering and the rhythm within a millisecond in order to play the music correctly. Therefore, we play "fingering games" to help connect the fingerings more quickly. The fingering games are played as warm-ups every day on the recorder, so the game adjusts as the students get better at the recorder. At first, I call out note names, and the students have to get their hands in that position all together as quickly as possible. Then, I start showing slides of the pitch on the staff with its name next to it and students have to get their hands in that position all together as quickly as possible. I award points for classes who get it within a certain number of seconds, and we have contests that last several days between classes. Next, I start showing slides of the pitch with no name next to it. It is basically a flash card game at this point. Next, I make the game a little more challenging, I challenge individual students to earn points for their class. First we do one note at a time. Next, I split the class into teams and have two students battle to get the note the fastest when I show it on the board. Then, I challenge individual students to do more notes at a time. For example, the board might have B, A, G, and students have to show that they can change the notes quickly but still get the correct fingerings in the correct order. Since implementing this game, my students' sightreading skills have greatly improved.
The fourth concept that I would like my fourth graders to understand about recorders is finding melodic patterns. In my experience, when students find patterns in music and remember which pattern happens at what time during the song, they are much more likely to play the song correctly because they feel significantly less overwhelmed. When learning a new song on the recorder, we always do warm-ups and rhythm reading first, and when it is time to add the melody to the song, we find the melodic patterns. At the beginning of learning, I show the students the first phrase of music. For example, on Amazing Grace, I show "Amazing grace, how sweet." Although it isn't the whole phrase, that portion of the phrase is repeated several times in the piece. I then call students up to find this phrase again and to bracket it. I then point out other phrases and have the students find the remainders. Last, we add in the "Tinies" as I call them - the pieces of notes or ends of phrases that differ (like "the sound" at the end of that first Amazing Grace phrase) from other phrases. As we point out each pattern, we learn to play them. At the end, we put small sections of patterns together and add to the sections until we can play the entire phrase. By the end of recorder belt learning, the students can bracket the phrases for a grade without help on individual sheet music. I am always amazed at what my fourth graders can do!
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