Seesaw Activities for La in SLSM
I’ve shared my love for the Seesaw app before. It’s the most intuitive, engaging, and practical app I’ve ever encountered for active music learning. I’ve used it for centers, for advocacy, and parent communication.
It also has some powerful applications for virtual learning! Here’s a sequence of learning activities for la in SLSM using the song, Acka Backa. Each activity is designed to correlate with the teaching strategies in The 2019 - 2020 Planning Binder.
You can grab each of the seesaw activities for free at the bottom of the post. Feel free to use, add to, or edit these activities in your own classroom!
These activities walk through a sequence of preparing, presenting, and practicing la. You can absolutely add more activities around the ones presented here! Use these as a starting point to create your own resources that work with your unique situation.
Preparing La
Play the game!
Games are an amazing place to begin work with any musical element, and students LOVE the game to Acka Backa! It can be adapted for Seesaw with a few tweaks.
Instead of playing with classmates, students choose the color in the circle they think will win. When a color is “out” students erase it using the white pen tool. Continue playing until there is only one color left.
Trace the melody
Students trace the melodic contour of Acka Backa. This is an example of an in-class activity that can very easily be transferred to virtual learning!
Track the steady beat
Even though this is melodic work, students will use their knowledge of steady beat to identify high and low sounds later.
Listening Activity
In this activity, students are guided to listen for the highest sound in the song. Throughout the entire melody, beat two is always the highest. Students sing the song and circle the beat with the highest sound.
A Mystery Note
Students have discovered a note higher than sol! In this activity, students sing the melody with the DESCRIPTION of the new pitch (something like high or up), rather than its standardized Western name.
Presenting La
Naming the New Note
By this point, students have physically, aurally, and visually prepared the pitch above sol. They’re probably ready to learn the standardized Western name it!
Practicing La
Writing La in a Known Song
In this activity, students read standardized notation for la, and catch the teacher’s mistake.
Grab the Seesaw activities below!
The guiding principle of the Kodaly philosophy is that only the best is good enough for a child.
When virtual learning becomes the best delivery method for instruction, educators look for innovative ways to maintain quality music education. We land on our feet, and re-imagine some aspects of active, engaged, and contextual musical learning.
If you use any of these activities, I’d love to hear about it. You can drop a comment below, find me on instagram (@victoriaboler), or shoot me an email (victoria@victoriaboler.com).
Happy teaching!
