Alisha Reeve MUSE 258 Citation Sound Connections: A Comprehensive Approach to Teaching Music Literacy 2010 Chapter 7: Developing

Rhythmic Literacy Don P. Ester Summary Reading Rhythm Patterns o Similar to reading tonal patterns o Flash cards are highly encouraged o Sequence Integrate patterns into echoing Show the card as students echo Students will read the card Read the series of cards

o Beat and tempo must be established and it must be slow o Simple and compound meters should be introduced at the same time Progressing through the Rhythm Content Sequence o Goal is to internalize syllables o Introducing Note Duration Names Happens after learning the aural function of many patterns Put several cards together in a line and explain bar lines as a way to separate them into groups Way to expand rhythm reading Great way to transition to time signatures and that each measure has the same amount of beats unless otherwise indicated o Introducing New Meter Signatures Start with 2/4 and 6/8 and use them to move to other time signatures Some meters require explanation that while they dont sound o Introducing Bar Lines and Explaining Meter Signatures

different they are notated differently Ex. Cut time, 2/2 o Introducing Rests First make the connection to sound and symbol Create a small rest card for use with the rhythm cards that can be placed over beats o Introducing the Tie Introduction in a similar way to rests Cannot be introduced aurally as ties deal directly with notation Rhythm cards can be modified in order to teach this concept Can be introduced more easily once students are comfortable with compound meter Metric borrowing is a tool for teaching triplets Supertriplet needs more explanation

o Introducing Triplets and Duplets: Metric Borrowing

o Introducing Changing Meter The sequence of this program makes changing meter extremely easy Beat based systems make changing within simple or compound easy o Introducing Variable Beat Meters Ex. 5/8 Once the aural skills are solid this isnt generally problematic Simply and integration of two meters Similar to tonal multipart No special way to teach Students motivation will increase when they can identify patterns they have learned in their music Notating Rhythm Patterns o Once Level 1 patterns are learned and can be read notation can begin o Notating should happen quite often o Same three stages as in tonal notation

o Multipart Reading

o Applying Rhythm Reading Skills to Performance Literature

o Lesson plans are given in the chapter Composing Rhythm Patterns o This should run in parallel to tonal composition o Compositions should be first to start of and expand as their knowledge grows

Reflection This chapter is just as useful as the last chapter. Both feature a lot of content and how it should be taught. As I said about the previous chapter, this chapter is a great resource for planning lessons and also to refer back to when preparing to teach. It uses research to plan lessons in a way that make they most sense pedagogically and introduce topics only when they are necessary for growth so that students dont get too bogged down with information. This chapter is great in that it covers each topic individually and list teaching stragegies.