Prepare, present, practice: knowing what comes next

Give the next activity a clear job

The choices add up: a song to introduce, a game to revisit, a chart to make, a skill to check. A clear musical destination gives us a way to choose between them.

For example, we might want children to hear, represent and read one or two even sounds within a beat. That gives each return to Engine, Engine Number Nine a purpose. We can hear the difference, show how it works, connect it to notation, then use it in another pattern.

Prepare, present, practice is a useful way to organize that journey, familiar to many teachers through Kodály-informed teaching. The phases describe what the learning needs. They can extend across lessons, and a class can be practicing one idea while preparing another.

Prepare: help children hear what they’re doing

Begin with a chant the class can already perform comfortably. In the opening line of Engine, Engine Number Nine, each “Engine” and “Number” puts two syllables into one beat. “Nine” has one sound across the fourth beat.

Chant with an even pat, then clap the words. We can help children locate the difference by asking them to demonstrate which words have two sounds within a beat. The musical experience gives the later symbol something to mean.

Next, invite children to represent the four-beat phrase using counters or their own marks. Ask them to chant and point through what they made. This lets us see whether their arrangement follows the sounds they heard, and where a little help would be useful.

What helps us decide: can children perform the phrase, locate the one- and two-sound beats, and explain or demonstrate their representation? Copying our finished chart gives us different information from building and checking their own.

Present: connect the familiar sound to its notation

When that relationship is becoming secure, connect the heard pattern to the rhythm syllables used in your classroom, then to the written notes. In this quarter-note beat, paired eighth notes represent the two even sounds; a quarter note represents the one-beat sound on “Nine.”

Chant the phrase, follow the written pattern, and connect each group to the sound it represents. A useful check is whether children can move between the sound and the notation and explain the relationship.

If that connection is uncertain, return to the particular beat they’re working out. The earlier listening and representing activities give us somewhere specific to help.

This handover applies to singing, too. Our guide to helping children sing independently explores how to step back from a familiar melody and listen for the next useful teaching move.

Practice: let the skill travel

Now vary the musical job while keeping the known elements. Reading, decoding from hearing and creating each ask children to use the same relationship in a different way.

• Read a fresh pattern. Offer a short, unfamiliar pattern using quarter notes and paired eighth notes. Give children time to work it out before hearing our version.
• Record what they hear. Perform a new pattern using those same elements. Children echo it, represent it, and read their version back to compare with the sound.
• Explore a change. Invite children to change one beat of a known pattern and perform the result. Ask them to show what changed and what stayed the same.

Frazee’s Discovering Orff makes a useful distinction between exploring changes to known material and improvising a new musical idea. Once children are comfortable changing a beat, invite them to invent a four-beat pattern using the rhythms they know. Let that pattern become an introduction to the chant. Their choice now has a place in the music, and we can hear how they use the skill for themselves.

Keep these attempts short enough to hear what is happening. We can reduce teacher modeling or answer-bearing visuals for a prepared turn while preserving the access supports learners need. If a prompt is needed, it tells us which part of the task to support next.

Return to the skill in a later lesson as well. Our guide to helping rhythm learning transfer explores what to notice when the music changes and the reminders return.

Make the next planning decision smaller

We don’t need a new song for every step. Before choosing the next activity, a brief note can keep the learning in view:

The skill we’re building

Hear, represent and read one or two even sounds within a beat.

What we noticed today

For example: children clap the familiar phrase securely, but some still need a model to show how its sounds fit within the beats.

What that suggests next

Return to the familiar phrase, support the sound-to-beat relationship, then invite another representation and read-back.

These notes help us pick up the thread at the next meeting, even when several classes need different next steps.

Goodkin’s Play, Sing & Dance brings systematic skill development and musical invention together. We can plan toward a clear goal while leaving space for children’s ideas. A connected sequence carries the preparation forward; in the room, we still choose when to model, when to pause, and when to give children more of the musical work.