MENC Forums

This was a suggestion from the previous General Music message boards:

sung with an echo, like a military role call.  Insert whichever grade level you have.

First grade, first grade fall in line,
Talking now would be a crime.
Turn around and face the door,
Or we'll do this more and more.

I enjoy improvising on a melody of a familiar/current song, or on sol-mi-la patterns to give directions as necessary. 

I agree that kids listen better when you sing.  For example, when teaching first graders about my letter cards for the song BINGO (when you turn the card over there's a picture of hands clapping, which means clap once), I sing to the melody: "oh, when you see the picture here you have to clap your ha-nds.  clap, clap, clap your hands (repeat twice) and do not sing the letter."

My students sit on rubber poly spots in rainbow colors, so in some classes I sing a song where they line up by what color they're sitting on (this is to the tune of "Johnny Works with One Hammer"):
d   d    d     r    m  d      r     s     m     d
If you are on (color), line up, line up.
d   d     d     r        m           d         r    s    d
If you are on (different color), line up now.
Once the kids have learned the song, I'll sing the colors and they'll sing "line up" or "line up now" in call/response format.
If you don't have color-coded spots, you can always change the lyrics to "If you're WEARING (color)".  This way you only have a few kids lining up at a time. This is also great for your pre-K/kindergarten students because you're reinforcing the concept of colors...or you could change it up and sing the colors in Spanish if you wanted to, if the kids are starting to learn Spanish :-).

Also, at my school we also have a "number order" for each class - each student is assigned a number and they line up in that order for most things, like at recess, to get ready to walk to lunch or specials, and a lot of our teachers prefer to have the students line up in number order, especially in the upper grades. So sometimes I'll just turn on whatever music we were previously listening to (usually our last class activity is a listening activity) and ask them to quietly line up in number order, and they line up and exit the room listening to music, which is kind of nice (I usually also have music playing when the enter the room at the beginning...I just started doing that this year and it's a really nice way to start class).

For other transitions (like if I'm having the students come sit around our oval carpet or go back to their spots afterwards), I do various things - sometimes I'll have them sing the song for the game we're going to play (or just played) if they've already learned it, or have them listen to me sing it as they move... or I may have them count on the resting tone of the song we're going to sing/just sang (and will change it up... sometimes instead of counting from 1 to 10, we'll count backwards from 10, if kids have learned this we may count by 2's up to 20, by 5's up to 50, by 3's up to 30, etc... good way to get some math integration in there too which will make your classroom teachers happy!), and they have to be sitting around the carpet or back to their spots by the designated number. I will give the instructions for this by singing them on the resting tone of the song we're going to sing/just sang.

Last edited by Christine Nowmos (2009-11-08 08:40:05)

for my younger grades, I do a "line check" where we go through a checklist in our heads.  So I call out the items, and when they do it, they say "check!"

Arms at your side (check)
body facing forward (check)
voices turned off (check)

and then we sing a line song:

Shh be quiet, shh be quiet,
no talking in the halls
don't even try it
shhhh

and at the end of the shhhh we are silent and ready to go into the hall.