Submitted by Liz Kelley, Livonia, Michigan
Idea posted October 27, 2008
For my fourth graders who are learning notation, each week I put up a combination of notes on a staff poster in the front of my room that spell a word. For example: dad, egg, or cabbage. I choose someone to guess the word and they get to pick where they sit during music for that day only. It is a great simple motivator that helps my students learn notation quickly.
See below for my list of mystery words:
a, be, ace, add, age, bad, bag, bed, bee, beg, cab, dab, dad, ebb, egg, fab, fed, fee, gab, gag, aged, babe, bead, beef, cafe, cage, dead, deaf, deed, edge, face, fade, feed, added, badge, caged, edged, egged, faced, faded, bagged, beaded, beefed, begged, dabbed, decade, deface, facade, gagged, baggage, cabbage, defaced
For an added level of difficulty, the student must use the word in a sentence to earn the seat swap. As you can see, this will open up some discussion about these words as well.