Introduce I–V of the major scale. With students, sing up and down the major scale, using notes 1–5 (e.g. 121, 12321, 1234321, 123454321) and pointing at your fingers as you sing. Once this is secure, miss out pitches/numbers (e.g. no. 4) to establish that students are confident what each pitch sounds like, and can move between them. With each new lesson, omit a different number. This exercise can be incorporated effectively into vocal warm-ups ahead of singing.
Play games. ‘Simon Says’ is great for reinforcing a sense of pitch using the numbers. With ‘Simon says 3, 2, 1’, for example, singing the numbers and pointing to the fingers means students have to do both in their response. Making this a game means they stop worrying about the names of notes and just have fun, practising the skill without pressure.
Identify major 2nds. Sing two notes and get students to identify whether the second note is the same, up a 2nd or down a 2nd. The quick way to show this is thumb flat, thumb up or thumb down, which can involve the whole class. You can extend this exercise to four- or five-note melodies, sticking to the interval of a 2nd and getting students to identify the direction.
Make sound visual. Get students to open Song Maker from Chrome Music Lab. Sing a phrase to them three times, leaving a gap between each and sticking to major 2nds. Get them to draw what this phrase sounds like. While drawing, they get instant confirmation of each note they think they hear, which is a good way of building confidence. Play this game several weeks in a row, to a point where students are beginning to find it easy.
Introduce the stave. Before getting this far, students should be familiar with the clef you're using. Sing a melody, then get students to work out its overall shape, working in pairs. As a class, work out what the melody looks like on the stave, having been given the first and last notes. Model how moving up one pitch means going up a line or space, and so on. Try a second melody, letting students work out the notes between the first and last. It's a good idea for students to work in pairs, then alone as their confidence builds. Keep the melodies short, ensuring you leave a decent gap between each repetition. Encourage students to hum the melodies as they write these down.
Widen the interval. Introduce the 3rd by getting students to sing doorbells, and then back-to-front door bells. Try singing a note and getting the class to sing a 3rd above and then a 3rd below. Point to your fingers to demonstrate the 3rd, so that students get the visual concept of skipping a note.
Revisit activities. Playing ‘Simon Says’, with hand gestures, and notating the melody on Song Maker adds familiarity to a new task. Allowing students to hook new information onto previous knowledge increases the chance of them understanding and recalling this in the future. Adding a sense of competition and fun helps increase student engagement, preventing the task from being a dry ‘dictation’ exercise.
Add intervals. Step by step, work your way through the major scale. By the end of KS3, you want students to have an understanding of all the major and perfect intervals of the major scale.
Perform. As warm-ups to lessons, teach songs that start with different intervals. When they've learnt to sing the first line, get them to identify the opening interval, or the interval between two words.
Compose. Students create much more interesting pieces if they understand how to create a singable melody line with a variety of intervals. If you're studying fanfares, get students to compose a vocal part that is made up mostly of 3rds and 5ths. If the genre is film, get them to decide on the most heroic jump for a superhero theme – what would they follow this with? Each time, get them to write down their ideas to help with memory and with building a bank of themes for future composition tasks.
Have you got ‘quick tips’ on an area of teaching you’d like to share? If so, email the editor at music.teacher@markallengroup.com
