Submitted by Chris Columbaro, Crystal Lake, Illinois

Idea posted March 22, 2004

In order for students to get the most out of scale degrees, solfège, and the staff, I like to incorporate kinesthetic as well as cognitive activities into my lesson plans.

I introduce the staff as lines and spaces. The rules are:

  1. We can either step from line to space or space to line,

  2. We can skip from space to space or line to line, or

  3. We can repeat on either a line or space.

I then demonstrate stepping, skipping, or repeating along the five Velcro lines on the floor.

Next, I invite students to try the activity as small groups in front of the class. I choose "teachers" who get to direct the stepping, skipping, and repeating, and give each student a chance to perform the movements. They get wildly into it and love watching each other jump up and down repeatedly when "repeat" is chosen.

The next progression is to add your voice and solfège (with moveable "do") to start on different pitches/lines or spaces on the floor. SM & L would be perfect since they consist of steps and skips. First, I demonstrate how SM are skips (either lines or spaces) then discuss SL as a step relationship. We echo with: our voices, hand signs and voices, just hand signs, just voices, and movements. I have them internally hear the pitches as a group, or I silently step, skip, or repeat across the floor staff.

Finally, I use the actual staff on a board to show steps, skips, and repeats. Students write problems for the class to solve, then as a group we decide whether the examples are steps, skips, or repeats.

This works great for smaller introductory exercises, but it can also be a whole lesson. I prefer smaller exercises so we can build the concept over several weeks and several learning domains.