2/4 Tuesday - Rhythm Practice

For this weeks 2/4 Tuesday I thought I would focus on rhythm practice. This time of year I review the rhythms students already know, plus I start introducing new rhythms. To go along with this I love to have games, activities, and apps to reinforce these concepts. Last year, I shared a game that I created for this purpose called Rhythm Concentration. You can learn more about that game HERE. However, here are a few more resources I have found.

Rhythm Football
This is a fun interactive SMARTboard file that you can get for FREE at TeachersPayTeachers. I found this game last year and my students love it. I have found that any rhythm activity that includes a sport in it is a great way to get boys excited to practice their rhythms. Unfortunately, if you do not have a SMARTboard you will not be able to have access to this file.

Poison Rhythm
This is a simple game and quite easy to adapt to any grade and any rhythms you want to work with. You start by writing four rhythms on the board, as depicted in the picture above. Then I mark one with an 'X' (somtimes I allow the students to pick the poison rhythm instead). The 'x' represents the poison rhythm. I clap one of the four rhythms and students should echo me by clapping the rhythm back. If I clap the poison rhythm they do NOT clap. The game is set up as teacher vs. student, so when I clap the poison rhythm either the students get a point (for not clapping) or I get a point (because they clapped the rhythm - even if it is just one student!). Sometimes I have classes that do not participate or just stop clapping all of the rhythms. When this happens I tell them I get points for them NOT clapping non-poison rhythms as well. This normally solves that problem.

Rhythm Cat
Rhythm Cat is an Ipad App for practicing rhythms. It is actually kind of fun even for a teacher. How it works: Students look at the rhythm and push the green button as they play the rhythm. When they play the rhythms correctly the notes light up green and they get to move on to the next level. If they don't hold the button down at the right time or long enough, etc. the notes turn red and if they miss a lot of notes they do not get to continue on to the next level. (click the picture to find more information about it)

Monkey Drum
Monkey Drum is another Ipad App for rhythm practice. This can be just a cute app for students to create and play with, but how I use it in my classroom is for rhythm practice. At the end of a class I'll pick students to play rhythms on the monkey drum app. After they play the rhythm the monkey will play the rhythm back. This is a great way for me to assess if students can play the rhythms correctly and to assess if other students can HEAR mistakes in a rhythm. It is a very cute free app, so there is no reason not to at least check it out. (click the picture to find more information about it)