How I Taught Elementary School Students To Sing a New Song - Late Kindergarten to Fifth Grade.
LATE KINDERGARTEN to FIFTH GRADE
After several months of always watching my mouth when I sing, we became such big singers that we were able to use a music sheet like the big kids do and sing a song. The initial modeling period was crucial in developing the preferred physical singing habits yhat I would expect to see when working with a lyric sheet.
By the time kids are in the last months of kindergarten, I was giving them 8.5 by 11 sheets of lyrics. The font size was as large as the page would permit.
Before the kids came into the room, I listed the four steps to learning a song (Read, Listen, Sing, and Sing Your Best) as well as the five components to “big singing” (No Hands on Face, No Screaming, Open mouth, Move Your Lips, Move Your Tongue) on the chalk board.
One of the first songs we used a lyric sheet for was the “Alphabet Song”.
LATE KINDERGARTEN to FIFTH GRADE
After several months of always watching my mouth when I sing, we became such big singers that we were able to use a music sheet like the big kids do and sing a song. The initial modeling period was crucial in developing the preferred physical singing habits yhat I would expect to see when working with a lyric sheet.
By the time kids are in the last months of kindergarten, I was giving them 8.5 by 11 sheets of lyrics. The font size was as large as the page would permit.
Before the kids came into the room, I listed the four steps to learning a song (Read, Listen, Sing, and Sing Your Best) as well as the five components to “big singing” (No Hands on Face, No Screaming, Open mouth, Move Your Lips, Move Your Tongue) on the chalk board.
One of the first songs we used a lyric sheet for was the “Alphabet Song”.
Read
I would tell the kids “We're going to sing the song but before we sing the song, I want you to read the words with me and then listen to the song. I'm going to say ‘Finger in the air’ and then you are going to put your pointer finger up in the air. Then I’m going to say ‘Title!’ and you to to put your finger on the title and say it.
Then I’ll say ‘Composed by?’ and they will say the name of the person next to the title. His name is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He’s the man who wrote the melody to our song.
Then I will say ‘Composed in the year?’ and you will say ‘1781’, the year that's next to Mozart’s name. That's the year that he wrote the song.”
Every song we sang had a composer and a composition date. I find it invaluable for children to understand that songs were composed by real people at a certain time in history.
Then I would say, “Ready, Read” and they would move their finger across each line and say every word of the song until we got to the very end. When they hit the last word, they were to take their finger off the paper and look at me.
I would model the same with my finger and paper – but I watched the kids like a hawk – not my paper.
“OK, let's give it a try.”
I'd say “Finger in the air? Title.”
Inevitably there would be someone they didn't get that so we would stop and I would do it again. If a child did not have their finger on the paper, I stopped, corrected it, and started again.
Their attention is focused on the paper and my attention is focused on their eyes and their index finger.
After reading the lyrics and dealing with any vocabulary questions, we would move ahead to “listen”.
Listen
“Now what I'm going to do is play the song for you. I know many of you know this song already but I want you to listen to how I sing it because there are certain things I do that are a little different than the way other people do it. While I'm singing it, you are going to keep your finger on the paper and follow along with your finger looking at the words as I sing them.
Finger in the air?
Title? The ABC song.
Composed by? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Composed in the year? 1781.
Ready, read!”
Then I would sing and play the single line melody at the piano. I watched the kids – not at my hands or at a paper.
Inevitably, there would be kids who would start to sing along and I would stop and remind them that their sole job is to listen and be ready to copy how I sang when it was their turn.
They were allowed to move their lips if they wanted to lip-sync while I was singing but no sound was to come out of their mouth.
We go through the whole system again.
Sing
“Okay, now it's the time we've all been waiting for, we all get to sing together. We're going to keep that finger on the paper though, even if you have the song memorized. Here we go!
Finger in the air?
Title? The ABC song.
Composed by? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Composed in the year? 1781.
Ready, sing!”
Usually someone starts to sing over the intro so I explain what an intro is and that the best thing they can do is watch my lips during the intro so they will see when it’s over and its time to sing.
We try again.
Within a few letters, I stop them again.
I sternly call up a student who has proactively demonstrated “big singing” techniques, specifically his hands were not his face, there was no screaming, his mouth was open, he moved his lips, and he moved his tongue.
As I talk with him about all the “big singing” tricks he was doing,
I also quietly say “I bet you were looking at my mouth a little bit and copying me when your fingers were on the words before, weren't you? Because that's okay as long as your eyes go up and down from the paper to my mouth oh, that's fine.”
I ask the student if I may give him a Mr. Holmes guitar pick for his excellent big singing. After he accepts the pick, I always tell the class ”Let’s give him a big hand!”
We then sing the song again and miraculously, I have a room of big singers. After a few letters I abruptly stop them, beaming with the biggest smile I can muster, and boom, “Did you hear that? Can you hear how good you sound now? Let's do it again, even bigger, not louder but bigger!”
After that, I typically gave them a couple of pluses on the board and ask them why I am giving them. I make a big deal out of kids who remember any of the components of ‘”big singing” – or find them on the board - and then give them a little bit of “go” time where they could blow off energy.
Sing Your Best
Once I go back to “stop” time, I say, “Now we have the most important step of all, the most important step to learning a song, sing your best. A lot of people learn how to sing but they never whisper to themselves ‘this time I'm going to sing it my best’.
Unless you say that to yourself, there's a good chance you're not going to sing your best. So if we're doing a new song and we get to step number four, sing your best, I need all of you to whisper to yourself ‘I'm going to sing my best this time’ and then I want you to do your best, biggest singing ever! Sounds like the angels you are!”
After singing their best, I tell them that they sang so big that they will be permitted to keep their song sheet and take it home.
Expanded Big Singing
As kids got older, ‘singing your best’ often led to the discussion of how many times do you have to do step number three – sing - before we can sing our best.
“We have to practice several times before we can sing our best. For some people they might need to sing a song five times, for some people it might be singing it fifty times.
When you hit our number, that's when we say ‘Okay, now I'm going to try my best’”.
With older kids, it would bring up the discussion of “When you go to the doctors, do you want them to try their best? Of course we do and we want them to try their best all the time. Part of learning to ‘sing your best’ is learning how to do your best at anything you set your mind to.
When you take your car to the auto shop, you want them to try their best, you want them to get it right the first time. Does anyone here have a mom or dad who had to take their car back because they didn't fix it right the first time?” and of course a slew of hands go up.
“The more you practice the habit of trying your best, the stronger that habit will be. The more apparent it will be when people look at you, they will see someone who tries their best. And that's the way you want people to look at you.”
As children progressed to more complex and extended lyrics, phonation fatigue would often set in during the “read” step. I would immediately stop the class and ask “If you don’t have enough energy to read the words, how do you expect to sing the song?”
I’d explain that “big reading” and “big talking “ were second cousins to “big singing” and that they should watch their favorite newscasters and see how they do “big talking” for hours at a time.
Feedback
It is CRUCIAL that you give feedback every ninety seconds at first and extend the duration to two minutes after the first fifteen minutes of learning a new song. Use the “plus and minus” chart I described in another post. Every time you put a plus or minus on the board tell the class WHY they got it.
At the end of class, recount how and why they got their pluses and minuses with a hope that the next time there will be more pluses and fewer minuses.
Closing Comments
As always, it comes down to skills, self-discipline, precise modeling, practice, and establishing good strong habits. I would have kids do the finger point on the paper all the way through fifth grade. We would use the same system – read, listen, sing, sing your best - with every song we learned.
When we worked with sheet music, sometimes the direction was to finger point to the words and sometimes it was to point to the notes.
If I was going to play guitar as accompaniment, I would do the “listen” step by playing the single line melody on the guitar while I sang the melody in their octave.
If I was accompanying on the “sing” step and the class was less than solid on the first pass of the melody, I would go back to the piano and sing and play the single line melody.
The idea was for the piano reinforcement to fade as their skills improved. More on that in my post on “the Hierarchy of Prompts”.
There are other systems to learn songs but this is the system I started and it worked like a charm for years at all age levels in elementary school. It doesn’t matter if you do it the way I have described here. The important thing is to find the best system that fits your students and schedule needs.
Be consistent.
Have some fun, give it a try, and make some music!
I would tell the kids “We're going to sing the song but before we sing the song, I want you to read the words with me and then listen to the song. I'm going to say ‘Finger in the air’ and then you are going to put your pointer finger up in the air. Then I’m going to say ‘Title!’ and you to to put your finger on the title and say it.
Then I’ll say ‘Composed by?’ and they will say the name of the person next to the title. His name is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He’s the man who wrote the melody to our song.
Then I will say ‘Composed in the year?’ and you will say ‘1781’, the year that's next to Mozart’s name. That's the year that he wrote the song.”
Every song we sang had a composer and a composition date. I find it invaluable for children to understand that songs were composed by real people at a certain time in history.
Then I would say, “Ready, Read” and they would move their finger across each line and say every word of the song until we got to the very end. When they hit the last word, they were to take their finger off the paper and look at me.
I would model the same with my finger and paper – but I watched the kids like a hawk – not my paper.
“OK, let's give it a try.”
I'd say “Finger in the air? Title.”
Inevitably there would be someone they didn't get that so we would stop and I would do it again. If a child did not have their finger on the paper, I stopped, corrected it, and started again.
Their attention is focused on the paper and my attention is focused on their eyes and their index finger.
After reading the lyrics and dealing with any vocabulary questions, we would move ahead to “listen”.
Listen
“Now what I'm going to do is play the song for you. I know many of you know this song already but I want you to listen to how I sing it because there are certain things I do that are a little different than the way other people do it. While I'm singing it, you are going to keep your finger on the paper and follow along with your finger looking at the words as I sing them.
Finger in the air?
Title? The ABC song.
Composed by? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Composed in the year? 1781.
Ready, read!”
Then I would sing and play the single line melody at the piano. I watched the kids – not at my hands or at a paper.
Inevitably, there would be kids who would start to sing along and I would stop and remind them that their sole job is to listen and be ready to copy how I sang when it was their turn.
They were allowed to move their lips if they wanted to lip-sync while I was singing but no sound was to come out of their mouth.
We go through the whole system again.
Sing
“Okay, now it's the time we've all been waiting for, we all get to sing together. We're going to keep that finger on the paper though, even if you have the song memorized. Here we go!
Finger in the air?
Title? The ABC song.
Composed by? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Composed in the year? 1781.
Ready, sing!”
Usually someone starts to sing over the intro so I explain what an intro is and that the best thing they can do is watch my lips during the intro so they will see when it’s over and its time to sing.
We try again.
Within a few letters, I stop them again.
I sternly call up a student who has proactively demonstrated “big singing” techniques, specifically his hands were not his face, there was no screaming, his mouth was open, he moved his lips, and he moved his tongue.
As I talk with him about all the “big singing” tricks he was doing,
I also quietly say “I bet you were looking at my mouth a little bit and copying me when your fingers were on the words before, weren't you? Because that's okay as long as your eyes go up and down from the paper to my mouth oh, that's fine.”
I ask the student if I may give him a Mr. Holmes guitar pick for his excellent big singing. After he accepts the pick, I always tell the class ”Let’s give him a big hand!”
We then sing the song again and miraculously, I have a room of big singers. After a few letters I abruptly stop them, beaming with the biggest smile I can muster, and boom, “Did you hear that? Can you hear how good you sound now? Let's do it again, even bigger, not louder but bigger!”
After that, I typically gave them a couple of pluses on the board and ask them why I am giving them. I make a big deal out of kids who remember any of the components of ‘”big singing” – or find them on the board - and then give them a little bit of “go” time where they could blow off energy.
Sing Your Best
Once I go back to “stop” time, I say, “Now we have the most important step of all, the most important step to learning a song, sing your best. A lot of people learn how to sing but they never whisper to themselves ‘this time I'm going to sing it my best’.
Unless you say that to yourself, there's a good chance you're not going to sing your best. So if we're doing a new song and we get to step number four, sing your best, I need all of you to whisper to yourself ‘I'm going to sing my best this time’ and then I want you to do your best, biggest singing ever! Sounds like the angels you are!”
After singing their best, I tell them that they sang so big that they will be permitted to keep their song sheet and take it home.
Expanded Big Singing
As kids got older, ‘singing your best’ often led to the discussion of how many times do you have to do step number three – sing - before we can sing our best.
“We have to practice several times before we can sing our best. For some people they might need to sing a song five times, for some people it might be singing it fifty times.
When you hit our number, that's when we say ‘Okay, now I'm going to try my best’”.
With older kids, it would bring up the discussion of “When you go to the doctors, do you want them to try their best? Of course we do and we want them to try their best all the time. Part of learning to ‘sing your best’ is learning how to do your best at anything you set your mind to.
When you take your car to the auto shop, you want them to try their best, you want them to get it right the first time. Does anyone here have a mom or dad who had to take their car back because they didn't fix it right the first time?” and of course a slew of hands go up.
“The more you practice the habit of trying your best, the stronger that habit will be. The more apparent it will be when people look at you, they will see someone who tries their best. And that's the way you want people to look at you.”
As children progressed to more complex and extended lyrics, phonation fatigue would often set in during the “read” step. I would immediately stop the class and ask “If you don’t have enough energy to read the words, how do you expect to sing the song?”
I’d explain that “big reading” and “big talking “ were second cousins to “big singing” and that they should watch their favorite newscasters and see how they do “big talking” for hours at a time.
Feedback
It is CRUCIAL that you give feedback every ninety seconds at first and extend the duration to two minutes after the first fifteen minutes of learning a new song. Use the “plus and minus” chart I described in another post. Every time you put a plus or minus on the board tell the class WHY they got it.
At the end of class, recount how and why they got their pluses and minuses with a hope that the next time there will be more pluses and fewer minuses.
Closing Comments
As always, it comes down to skills, self-discipline, precise modeling, practice, and establishing good strong habits. I would have kids do the finger point on the paper all the way through fifth grade. We would use the same system – read, listen, sing, sing your best - with every song we learned.
When we worked with sheet music, sometimes the direction was to finger point to the words and sometimes it was to point to the notes.
If I was going to play guitar as accompaniment, I would do the “listen” step by playing the single line melody on the guitar while I sang the melody in their octave.
If I was accompanying on the “sing” step and the class was less than solid on the first pass of the melody, I would go back to the piano and sing and play the single line melody.
The idea was for the piano reinforcement to fade as their skills improved. More on that in my post on “the Hierarchy of Prompts”.
There are other systems to learn songs but this is the system I started and it worked like a charm for years at all age levels in elementary school. It doesn’t matter if you do it the way I have described here. The important thing is to find the best system that fits your students and schedule needs.
Be consistent.
Have some fun, give it a try, and make some music!
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