Lesson Plan: Learning and Performing "Hot Cross Buns" on the soprano recorder.


Scenario:[30 3rd grade students are facing teacher. Each student has a recorder on lap; teacher uses flash cards and whiteboard. Students already know how to produce the three tones B-A-G on the recorder. They do NOT yet know how to read music.]

1. Teacher announces song class will learn on recorder. Class first learns to sing song by rote (if song not already known).

2. Teacher sings song, line by line, encourages class to join in. Class learns song by rote quickly.

3. Teacher shows notes drawn on whiteboard (or tagboard) representing rhythm of song only. That is, notes with time values of half, quarter and eighth in sequential order of song--but not on staff.

4. Teacher points to each note in turn as class sings song once again. Class then directed to clap hands to rhythm of their own singing. Teacher points to notes rhythmically as class sings and claps hands.

5.Teacher then produces rhythm cards...fragments of rhythm of song class has just clapped and sung to. Teacher shows each card, consisting of any number of notes from two to eight. Teacher counts "1,2,3,4" before showing each card. Students then clap (in time to teacher's beat) the rhythm they see before them. Students then directed to do the same thing by playing the note "B" on their recorders. (A game can easily be made of this as students are called upon to play the rhythms one child at a time.

6.Teacher now explains that every note has a letter name, which is the name of the line or space of the staff that the note happens to be resting on.

7. Teacher shows 5-line staff on whiteboard (or tagboard on easel). Points to lines while saying "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge"; and to the spaces between the lines while saying "Freddie Always Catches Elephants". THIS STEP IS OPTIONAL. ALL WE NEED TO KNOW ARE THREE NOTES AT THE MOMENT.

8. Repeat steps #3,#4 and #5. This time three notes--B,A,G--are labeled, as whole notes, in their proper places on the staff.

9. While performing step #5, teacher now substitutes notes for rhythms in the form of a new set of flash cards. The cards are presented as before, but this time they are on a 5-line staff, so students can now play the correct notes on their recorders as each new card is shown. Another opportunity for a fun game: first student to play the note correctly wins.

10. The final step is simply to show the piece as a whole on the next piece of tagboard. Teacher counts "1,2,3,4" and points to each note as it is played by all the students.