Rhythm Writing

Over the past 4 months, students in second grade have been working on learning to speak and read rhythms! We have been learning our rhythms in the same way you learn to speak your native language; by hearing and speaking them first, then reading them (learning the symbols for them), and then once you can successfully read them, we learn to write them. All of our second grade students can successfully speak, read, and now write the rhythms for quarter notes (du), eighth notes (du-de), and quarter rests (sh!).

Here we can see groups of second graders writing rote (which means copying) rhythms on their first time writing! We are practicing writing our rhythm notation. Typically, students have issues with this because they write them as lollipops, where they color in the circle and then draw a line in the middle. We are working on not doing this, instead writing the letter d or p and coloring in the circle for our notes. These kiddos are extremely successful at this as you can see!

Here we have students working on worksheets to create their own rhythmic patterns. Mastery of a subject means they can successfully and correctly create (or improvise) their own, and then speak or play it on an instrument correctly. Our second graders have successfully gained mastery over these rhythms, and we are starting to move on to new rhythms now!