Blog Posts

Teaching Tempo 2

Denise Gagne

Responding to and Assessing Tempo

This newsletter is a follow-up to the Tempo newsletter, that will give suggestions for having children respond to tempo and assessing tempo.

Responding to Tempo in Music

Can your students hear a piece of music and have a sense of the tempo? Play several musical selections, or sing a simple song at a variety of tempos. Have the students find and tap the beat.

For young students, create a pointing page like this. Have the students point to the place on the line that they think fits the tempo the best.

Slow or Fast Pointing page

Older students might listen to a piece of music and decide what tempo it is from a list that you give them or from your word wall or from the tempo chart given below.

Childrenʼs responses with movement to pieces of music will show you whether or not they are able to respond to a variety of different tempos. I have found movement with balloons to be a very effective way to have children move to slow music. Air on a G String and Winter, by Vivaldi are two pieces that I ask children to keep the beat with balloons. They are really focussed in this activity, and respond beautiful to the slow tempo.

Movement with ribbons or playing a cup game to fast music is equally captivating.

Tempo Tornado

This tempo assessment idea comes from Artie Almeida.

On 9x12 envelopes or on baskets, write the tempo words you are working on with your class : Allegro, andante, adagio, etc.

On index cards, write the definitions of the tempo words that are teaching: Fast and lively, very slow, etc.

Place the Tempo Word envelopes in different parts of the classroom, spaced out so kids have to hunt for the correct envelope to put their definition in.

Give one or more definition index cards to each student.

Play a musical selection. In the Listening Kit 3, the following selections would be fun to use with this activity:

1 Entry of the Gladiators

5 Triumphal March of the Boyars

13 Turkish March

27 La jongleuse (the juggler)

Kids race to find the envelope or the basket that has the tempo word that matches their definition. They put their index card in the envelope or basket that matches the definition. The race will be more challenging if they have more than 1 definition to match up with a tempo word.

They get a very active listening experience, and the teacher has a good idea if the kids have learned the tempo definitions and are ready for a formal assessment.