The games ranged from singing, to notation, musical terms, to breath control. I kept a medal tracker on one of my bulletin boards that allowed the students to see what gold/silver/and bronze medals they won, and the students had a blast, and I had fun with assessment!!!!!
The Events:
Boomwhacker relay-
In this event the students had to read rhythms on flash cards count them out loud, and then play them on the boomwhackers. They had a choice of playing and counting Kodaly symbols, or actual notes. If they chose the Kodaly symbols and got it correct they received 1 point, for every note they got correct they received 3 points. I set a timer for 10 minutes and however many points they had by the end of the game is what their class points were.
assessement: By doing this I was able to see which of the students were able to read, and play rhythms. I was also able to evaluate which students needed more help with counting real notes, as opposed to Kodaly symbols.
Music Racer-
In this game the students had 5 chances to work as a group to see how quickly they could identify the notes on the staff. By using the website www.musicracer.com I was able to have random notes come up on the projector screen, as the students called the notes out I clicked on them allowing the next note to come up. They were identifying 8 notes as quickly as possible, the quickest ties my kids got to was 11 seconds! Not too shabby!!!
assessment: This event was to evaluate the students on how well they know the note names of the notes on a treble clef staff. This information will be important to know in order to get the kids into composing their own music on a staff (our next project!).
Long Note-
What kid doesn't love to just hold out a note as long as they possibly can??? As a parent, I know my oldest will do this just to hear her own voice! But! In Mrs. G's music Olympics it's not only something the CAN do, but it's something they GET to do! Each student was timed with a stop watch to see how long they could hold out a note. I took the student with the longest time, and that became their class time that I used to figure out medals.
assessment: There is a method to the madness that is the long note competition! All of these students have to sing in music class, or in chorus, and as such, we have been working on the proper breath control for singing. Breathing from the diaphragm versus breathing from your chest (or shoulders as the kids say, because they can see their shoulders go up with they breath in). Some students I was pleasantly surprised when I saw they were able to hold a note for 33 seconds! Others only made it 2 seconds. This lets me know which classes need more help on breath control so that they can have a better sound when singing!
Egg Note Relay-
In this event there was a giant bucket of Easter eggs. On each egg I drew with a sharpie marker a different musical term, such solfege, dynamics, tempo's, etc. The students would have to listen to the clue I gave (such as: find the egg that means to play soft), run to the bucket, find the egg with the corresponding symbol on it, and then put the egg on a spoon. After the egg was on the spoon they had 3 tries to walk the egg down to the other end of the room where a bongo drum sat. They would have to hit the bongo 3 times, walk around and bring the egg back to me, dropping the egg into an Easter basket. There was a timer set for 10 minutes, at the end of the time however many eggs were in the basket is what their score was.
assessment: In this event I wanted to check the students on their musical vocabulary. What did they know, what don't they know so that I can work on that later. For instance they were all very good at solfege, but had a hard time with tempos i.e. allegro, largo and so on. I now know that we will need to spend more time going over those things with them.
Name That Tune-
In this event there was 30 song titles and their composers on a deck of cards. One at a time, the students would come up and sing the song on the card, trying to get the rest of the class to guess the song. The difficult part, however, was that they were not allowed to use any real words. The students had to use doo's or la's or something other than the words to get the rest of the class to guess. When the song was guessed correctly then the the person who got it correct was the next one to sing, and the other person took their spot.
assessment: There was a lot of great things to assess here. One of the national standards for music education is to sing alone, and with others. This got the students singing all by themselves. This is HUGE, a lot of times students will not sing alone, especially if they don't think they sound like Bruno Mars, or Demi Levato, but because it's in a game setting, and they're not using "real words" they will sing! Also, the rest of the class is actively listening to what the person is singing, this gets their ears in gear! They are analyzing what they are hearing, and are able to train their ears to figure out what it is they're listening to.
All together, I feel as if this was a GREAT form of assessment for me. It gave me some very invaluable information on the students, where they are, and what areas we need to improve upon. It was done in a way that allowed the students to have fun, and allowed me to administer assessments without them having to be the same old, same old.
Musically yours,
Mrs. G
