A New Toy... Smartboard!

A few months ago I got a brand new Smartboard in my classroom! Before school was finished in June, I was able to try a few fun games with the kids that focus on music literacy. Here is what we tried out.

STAFF WARS!

My students absolutely love this. I even had students come back the next day and say that they had played the game at home on their own! I love tricking students into learning... muuahahaha.

The game works by choosing a mission first. We always choose treble clef. Press the start button and go! As a note travels across the screen on the staff, a student must  press the correct note name. If a note name is incorrectly identified, the note explodes! As the levels increase, so does the speed of the travelling note! It is so exciting!

I observed another music teacher in my division do this with her class. She is amazing and incorporates Smartboard activities into her lessons on a regular basis! I follow her model for how we organize the game. I have all the students stand in a line, one behind the other in front of the board. Each student gets a turn and then goes to the back of the line. After everyone has had a turn for practice, I split them up into 2 teams and each team plays until their 3 video game lives are finished. The team with the most points wins!

Staff Wars can be downloaded for free at www.themusicinteractive.com. Other ideas for technology in the Music room are there too. Check it out!

KOOSHBALL RHYTHMS!

There is a great wiki at http://mustech.pbworks.com. It has tons of ideas and lessons for technology in Music. My grade 1 students loved practicing their tas and titis by playing the Kooshball Rhythms. Each student had a turn at throwing the Kooshball at one of the circles on the Smartboard and then a rhythm would pop up that the class would clap and read aloud. I had to try a few different types of balls on the Smartboard first because I didn't want to break our new toy!

BLOB CHOIR!

I found this game on a fantastic blog called Technology Rocks, Seriously. I haven't played it with students yet but I think it would be so fun for ear training and matching pitch. This could be helpful for students to understand what matching pitch and not making pitch actually sounds like. I find that some students really don't understand what that means and don't hear it when they themselves are singing.

Three individual examples are sung by the three little "blobs". Finally the big "blob" sings and students are to match the correct little "blob" pitch. I do think that the students would have more success if they were able to hear the big "blob" pitch first, but I will try it out with students in the Fall and let you know how it goes!

Try some of these out and let me know what you think! Please feel free to share Smartboard activities and other technology ideas that you have! I would love some ideas!

- Steph