William Alex Pobocik

MUSE 351
Improvisation Assignment

*For the purpose of this activity, I would teach this song as a rhyme without pitch*

This lesson is designed to help students develop melodic improvisation skills. To do this,
I will use the song/rhyme I have a car and will limit my students to do pentatonic. The rhythms
in this song are quarter notes and 2 eighth note groupings. Given the rhythmic and melodic
patterns this lesson will be good for third grade students. By that time they will have had enough
experience with quarter notes and eighth notes, as well as with echo imitation of pentatonic
songs and patterns that this lesson would be within their zone of proximal development.
 To begin this lesson I would have the text of the rhyme written on the whiteboard and
would have each student use classroom procedures to select a classroom percussion
instrument with some students on melodic instruments and others on indiscriminate pitched
percussion. Then I would use a whole part whole approach to teach the first half of the rhyme to
the students: Model the whole rhyme, echo the teacher lines 1, 2, 3, 4, echo teacher lines 1 & 2,
then lines 3 &4, echo teacher on the first half of the rhyme.
I would then tell the students that I had forgotten to teach whole rhyme and would teach
them the honk honk section of the song by rote. Then, I would ask the students to decide
which of our classroom instruments sounded the most like a honk, rattle, crash, and a
beep. We would then as a class recite the rhyme with the instruments we decided on played in
place of honk, rattle, crash, and beep. This part could be difficult for some students, so I
would build in repetition of the instructions and move students around so that they would be
near their peers which are performing the same parts as them.
Once they felt comfortable with this, I would have each student pair up with another
student who has a different type of instrument than them (i.e. pitched or indiscriminate). I would
then have the pitched instruments remove all but their do, re, and mi bars. Then, I would
demonstrate the activity by reciting the first half of the rhyme then improvising using three
pitches on the second half to the rhythm of the rhyme, then immediately begin reciting the first
half of the rhyme. During the return of the first half (A section), I would show the students that
they would then have to switch with their partner so that each student rotated between pitched
and indiscriminately pitched instruments. Once I had switched to the indiscriminately pitched
instrument I would demonstrate that those students are to play their instruments each time
honk honk returns while their melodic peers improvise. This activity could be confusing so I
would review it a couple of times for the whole class, this way struggling students can see it
again without their peers seeing them be corrected by the teacher.
Eventually I would allow the students to add their so and la bars to their instruments. I
would also eventually instruct each student to play together on honk honk. The first honk
honk the students would play mi re, the second time would be mi do, third time mi re, and
ending on mi do. Knowing that not all students advance at the same rate, I would be observing
the students and looking out for students that are struggling. For these students I could limit
their melodic options to mi, re, and do and tell them that the song would sound better with more
of these notes, or I could put them solely on an indiscriminate pitched instrument and tell them
that the song would sound better with more unique indiscriminate pitched instruments.
Conversely, for advanced students I could have them improvise over the A section of the
rhyme each time it comes around.
Although the scope of my activity is developmentally appropriate for its intended age
group in terms of rhythm and melody, the improvisational nature of it leaves plenty of room for
differentiated instruction. For struggling students I can limit their options for improvisations and
for the more advanced students I can add on additional materials which they can improvise
over, this way I can provide developmentally appropriate challenges for all my students.