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‘Rhythm’ has featured in our Year 2 lessons over the past few weeks. Pupils have been clapping the rhythm of some short songs that they know well and recognising the difference between long and short notes and noticing any rests.
This week, I began to introduce rhythm language by using the words ‘ta’ and ‘ti-ti’ to represent the long and short sounds and a ‘shhh’ for a rest. (These are representative of crotchets, quavers and crotchet beat rests). We sang each song using this language then began to notate the rhythm. This was firstly shown on their bodies with the children demonstrating the ‘ta’ as a single person and the ‘ti-ti’ as 2 children connected together (just like quavers) and a capital ‘Z’ for the rest. They then drew these and began to comment on patterns and repeated phrases in the songs. For a bit of fun, the children held up each phrase on their white board then changed positioned to see how this changed the rhythm. Finally, they created their own phrase to add to the song.
This technique of teaching the children to read and write rhythms is incredibly accessible and is a method introduced by ‘Kodaly’ which makes internalising and performing the rhythms simpler to process. It is amazing to see the children accurately reading and writing rhythms after just one lesson and also really enjoying the process.
