Bryson Tarbet 0:00
steady beat is one of those incredibly foundational aspects of music education. And if you don't have steady beat, and if your students aren't able to access their steady beat and develop the understanding of a steady beat, you're going to really struggle with pretty much every concept after that. So today, we're gonna be diving into steady beat my favorite ways to teach it and some ways to overcome some common struggles when teaching steady beat to your students.
Intro 0:26
You're listening to that music podcast, with Bryson Tarbet, the curriculum designer and educational consultant behind that music teacher at the elementary music summit each week, Bryson and his guests will dive into the reality of being an elementary music teacher, and how music can truly be transformative in the lives of the students you serve. Show Notes and resources mentioned in this episode can be found at that music teacher.com.
Bryson Tarbet 1:00
This episode is brought to you by my study beat Survival Guide to grab your free guide that contains my favorite songs, resources, chants and activities to use for study beat, head on over to that music teacher.com/study beat again, that's that music teacher.com/study Beat. Now this might sound a little bit weird, but actually one of my favorite things to teach in the classroom is study beats. I love the little ones. I love teaching, you know, the younger grades. And I don't know if that's part of the reason why. But steady beat is one of my favorite things to do in my classroom. And thankfully, so because study B is so incredibly important when it comes to developing the foundational skills of music making in our students. I mean, if you think about it, you know, if your students really don't have a solid understanding, of steady beat, and things like that, they're really going to struggle with one sound versus two sounds on the beat, they're really going to struggle with rhythm, they're really going to struggle with note duration, placing the proper value on teaching steady beat in the classroom, I think it's a really good investment that we can make in our students and in our curriculum so that we can be successful later on. I'll be honest, my kindergarten class, I have an incredibly wonderful schedule, especially when it comes to kindergarten, I see them every three days for 40 minutes. And that is a wonderful opportunity for us to really dive into music making throughout the kindergarten year. So when they come into kindergarten, they are often having no experience with any sort of formal music education, which is, you know, obviously very similar to a lot of you guys out there as well. But what I love about the way that my my schedule is set up is that because I see them for 40 minutes, every three days, we are really able to get a lot of experience making music before they come in, in the first grade year. I mean, if I'm being perfectly honest, one of my and honestly, by that I mean, my main goal for kindergarten music is for them to obviously, keep the love of music going and have fun and be able to explore and interact with music in ways they've never done before. But you know, curriculum wise, I want them to leave kindergarten with a really pretty solid understanding of steady beat. So we really don't get much into rhythm in kindergarten. And again, I see my kids every three days, for 40 minutes, we could totally probably get to rhythm. But I think it's so much more useful, in my opinion, to spend a lot of time making sure they truly have a good understanding of study beats, and that they have a true understanding of how to access their head voice. Or you simply leave a formal introduction of rhythm until first grade. Now obviously, you know, I can kind of take the the the rooms, the kids that I have and kind of understand that a if they might be ready towards the end of the year to start doing some rhythm prep. But honestly, my main goal for kindergarten is for them to be able to access their head voice and for them to have an understanding of steady beat. Let's talk about some of my favorite ways to do steady beat. Because there are a bunch that I absolutely love. And like I said and like I said before, and I will probably keep saying is that this is such a foundational aspect of music education that I really think that we need to spend a lot of time thinking about it. So one of my favorite ways to do steady beat is to just have them use it in their body somehow, whether that be marching it whether that be keeping their spider fingers, the steady beat on their knees, whether it be them saying alright, we just kept our spider finger beat on the mirror, we skip her spider fingers on her knees, where else can we keep it and they keep it on their head while they're singing or they keep it on their feet or they keep it on their chest, whatever. Allowing them to have that physical, tactile approach of of feeling the beat and giving the beat is a wonderful way to allow them to experience the beat. But also I can look and see who's struggling and who's able to show the beat and who's not. But there are some common pitfalls that you need to come into when you're doing things like that. Kindergarteners often struggle with impulse control, and obviously they like to move fast So if you're trying to have them do a slow beat, that's probably not going to be helpful. So if you want them to be able to show the beat that they are feeling, you're going to have to use that micro beat you're going to have to make sure that you're not going mouse mouse see lit toe mouse see because if you're going that slow you're gonna lose them every once in a while you might be able to do it and they may be able to do it for a few beats, but you're not gonna be able to get through the whole song when that that that that's low. So for instance, if I were going to have my students keep the beat on their knees for mouse mousy, I would go somewhere on this beat well smell see little mousy Herbie Herbie do and have them keep that beat on their knees and see what I can see. And like, Alright, are we able to keep it Vietnamese are some of us going really, really fast, or some of us doing the rhythm or some of us mentioned the words, that's kind of where I'm getting a lot of the information is just like observing what is going on in my classroom, as we're doing it. A wonderful way to enforce reinforce that steady beat is using drums, I love drums, what kindergarten isn't gonna like a drum, I have gathering drums in my classroom, I have four of them. And they're wonderful because I can have four or five kids, or six, even if I need to on a drum. And they can keep the beat. And it's loud. It's a little chaotic. But once the kids get used to using the instruments you can use to Alright, we're not just making noise, we're actually you know, we're doing this for a very specific purpose. That's where we can really get this steady beat. So we have a lot of I do a lot of practice using those, those gathering dramas to allow the students to keep the steady beat. So on way that I will do this first time. All right, I'm going to sing the song, you're going to keep the beat. Once I'm able to do that, then we're going to sing the song together while they keep the beat. And then the last step was alright, they're going to keep the beat and sing it and I'm not going to do anything. And that's kind of that gradual release method where we're starting all together, I'm giving them more and more of the ownership of what we're doing. And then I'm kind of backing away and kind of giving them the reins. This is a little different than the other ways that I've talked about so far about steady beat, but I love using chants. I think getting that melodic aspect and just kind of putting it on the back burner for a little bit really allows us to focus in on the beat of it, rather than kind of misconstruing the beat and then the melodic contour, things like that. So I use a lot of chance in kindergarten, especially early in your your earlier in the year kindergarten. One of my favorite chants is BB Bumblebee. The kids love it. I have fifth graders is still asked for BB Bumblebee. But it goes like this because bee bee bumble bee stung oh man upon his knee stung a pig upon his snout. I declare that you are out. It's an elimination game. It's a lot of fun. And it really has that steady be going on. You can use that with drums, you can use that with you know, keeping the beat on your body. And then there's a great game where you use a B puppet and you're basically just you're going around, and then I declare that you are out buzz, buzz buzz and if a student gets buzz, they have to sit down the kids love it. Little aside about this, there's a wonderful book called friend the V by calibre net, which kind of takes the BB Bumblebee and takes it into a little bit of a different story. That's a great one. Just a little shameless plug there for Callie, another former music teacher who's an amazing person, another one of my favorite ways to have students experience to be and kind of show me the beat, which is a great way for assessment on the beat is definitely a little bit more of my code eyesight, showing but basically putting iconic notation on the board and a grid. So or whether it be stars for Starlight or crowns or queen, Queen Caroline, or even just Hertz. And having the students point and making sure that they're getting going through all the stars or all the all the icons and making sure when they get to the end, they're at the end of the song. So when they get to the end of the song, they don't want to have any extra hearts. But they also don't want to be you know, in order to run in the hearts before. That's a great way we do that with like beat boards on as a class and then we'll get the pointer up on the chalkboard and they'll keep the beat as they move along. What's a great way if when you're doing heavy if you have one person up on the on the board, have all the students points. So I used to like to tell him all right, I want you to take your finger and you pull it out. And now it's a really, really long finger. And you're gonna point along with us as Johnny over here points with a pointer on the chalkboard. So not only is that is that really good way to assess whether Johnny is able to do it, you're able to kind of see where everyone else is the classes a little bit informally, just kind of watching them and seeing where they are at. Again, this is going to be kind of my code isight showing but I actually don't use the word beat when I'm first talking about the steady beat. And this is totally up to you. I'm not saying you have to do this. This is I know there's a whole thing about it. But I like to talk about how are we saying steady or unsteady? Because we talk a lot in kindergarten we talk a little bit about comparatives, you know to be loud or quiet, are we doing it fast or slow, high or low? And then I like to do steady or unsteady. And I like to bring it back especially when I'm getting closer towards officially saying hey, this thing that we've been studying, it's the beat that music has beat. I like to bring it back to our heart. So what I like to do is I like to do some sort of gaming activity where the kids are a little bit more active. So they're getting their heart rate up. And then I have them sit down and said, Alright, put your hand on your heart, your heart move a little fast. Yeah, I'm the kind of leader look at my app watch. Well, yeah, my heart's going really fast. Wow, that's awesome. Now let's take a couple seconds. And let's see if we can slow down our hearts. And we kind of take some deep breaths, you know, a little shameless SEL plug in there. But then we just kind of slow down our hearts. And we are awesome. So what I love about our heart is that our heart can go fast, it can go slow, but it's usually going to be one or the other, it's not going to be going fast, fast, fast, fast and slow, then fast and then slow, then so because if you know, you might, if your heart was willing to go, you might have to go see a doctor. And I don't have to see anywhere you guys go to a doctor. And then I take that into the same kind of thing into music. And they said, You a music our music has a heartbeat to and our music can be faster, we're gonna be slow, like we've talked about before, but we always wanted to kind of pick one we don't want it to kind of keep going back and forth. We don't want to go be be bumblebees document upon his knee. So you know, if we don't like we don't want it to go fast and slow, then follow them fast. And btw that would be too complicated. And then we bring it back into where,
you know, the beat can be fast, the beat can be slow, but the beat is always going to be steady. And then we do a lot of work saying alright, is this steady beat? Or is this something different? Is this steady? or unsteady? Is this beat? Or is this something completely different? And we do a lot of working with that. And honestly, that kind of usually takes us to the end of the school year. And I know that you know, there are probably some of you to say, Whoa, Bryson, you're spending way too much time on a steady beat. But my, my my professional opinion is, especially with the kids that I serve. Currently, I would much rather than come into first grade, and have a really solid understanding of steady beat than me pushing in and say alright, this is Titan, TT and kindergarten. And then having them come into first grade. And everyone's kind of in different places. There are still people who aren't quite understanding study B, we have some people that are obviously probably doing fine with time TT, but everyone's kind of, you know, doing with that foundation isn't there, I would much much rather have an incredibly firm foundation, then for me to push ahead a little bit and not have everyone come along with us. But I could definitely talk about study B and my favorite ways to do study beat for ages because like I said, I love teaching steady beat. But if you want to learn a little bit more about my favorite games, chants activities and songs for steady beat, go ahead and download my free city beat Survival Guide. It has a lot of my favorite songs and chants including the games and different concepts that can be used for and in like an ebook format. So to download that free guide you head over to that music teacher.com/study beat. I will also include that link in the show notes wherever you're listening now so you can download that free guide. But if you have any other questions about study beat, or if you'd like to, like chat me up, I would love for you to reach out to me, send me an Instagram message. Even if you're like hey, I disagree with you. Let's talk about that. I want to have some more conversation and I would love to continue this conversation off of the podcast. With that being said, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and I will talk to you next time.
