Sally Fetterman

Dr. Talbot
MUS149

Assignment: #4.3 - Movement / Listening

Context: 1st Grade General Music
Prior Knowledge: Students have prior experience with finding the beat in a piece of music. Some
students struggle more than others. The students have never had experience in accented beats.
Essential Question: How can different rhythms add variety to a piece of music?

I. National Standards:
1. MU:Cr2.1.1a With limited guidance, demonstrate and discuss personal reasons for
selecting musical ideas that represent expressive intent.
2. MU:Pr4.1.Ka With guidance, demonstrate and state personal interest in varied musical
selections.
3. MU:Re7.1.Ka With guidance, list personal interests and experiences and demonstrate
why they prefer some music selections over others.
4. MU:Cn10.0.1a Demonstrate how interests, knowledge, and skills relate to personal
choices and intent when creating, performing, and responding to music.
II. Learning Outcomes:
1. Students will define accented beats.
2. Students will create a motion for the accented beats.
3. Students will differentiate between a steady beat and accented beat
4. Students will create a two bar phrase with accented and unaccented beats.
III. Materials:
1. YouTube video: “Sunshine” by Tom Misch

Misch, T. (2015). Tom misch - sunshine. Retrieved 10/10, 2020, from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghuXuZAocqE

IV. Key Terms:

1. Steady beat: The natural ongoing repetitive pulse that occurs in music.
2. Accent: A stress on a particular beat.
V. Procedure:
1. Teacher will play “Sunshine”, by Tom Misch.
2. When the song starts, the teacher will tell the students, “Let’s find the steady beat of this
song. Pat the steady beat with me.”
3. The teacher will start to pat the steady beat on their lap and the students will follow.
4. The teacher will look around the circle to make sure all of the students are patting the
steady beat. If there are any students that are struggling, the teacher will help them
individually.
 5. Once the students are patting for a while and they all find the steady beat, the teacher will
pause the song and say, “Nice work everyone. What you all just found was the steady
beat of the rhythm using body percussion. I think if we listen more closely to the
percussion, we can find that some beats are louder than others.”
6. The teacher will resume the song and keep patting the steady beat. The teacher will say
“If there are four beats…” *gestures four beats with fingers* “...which ones are louder? 1,
2, 3, or 4? Show me with your hands.”
7. The teacher will call on a student who has the correct fingers up to tell the class their
answer.
8. The teacher will say, “Yes that’s exactly right! This is called the accent. Is the accent
louder or softer than the steady beat? Feel free to call out.” And the students should call
out “louder”.
9. The teacher will say “Yes, good job. So what is something we can show on our bodies
that is louder than patting the steady beat on our laps?”
10. The teacher will use one of the students’ suggestions to demonstrate the accented beats.
11. Then the teacher will play the song and have the students demonstrate the accented beat
with the student’s suggestion.
12. The teacher will say, “instead of patting a steady beat on our laps, let’s march the steady
beat in a circle.
13. The students will march as the song plays.
14. The teacher will say “Now show the steady beat while marching.”
15. The students will march
16. After the students get the hang of it, the teacher will split the group in half and have one
side demonstrate the steady beat while the other side will demonstrate the accented beats.
17. The teacher will randomly tell the sides to “switch”, so the side that was demonstrating
the accented beats will demonstrate the steady beats and vice versa.
18. After this activity, the teacher will ask the students to come up with a two-measure (eight
beats) phrase using accented and unaccented beats.
19. The teacher will say, “first, listen to mine, and repeat after me”, and then the teacher will
clap a two-measure phrase with accented and unaccented beats, and the students will
repeat the phrase.
20. Then, the next person in the circle will clap their two-measure phrase, and the class will
repeat it.
21. This will repeat for everyone in the circle.
VI. Assessments:
1. The teacher will assess the students identification of accented beats based on the numbers
that the students hold up with their fingers, using a +/- scale.
a. +: Students show the correct numbers on their fingers.
b. -: Students show the incorrect numbers on their fingers.
2. The teacher will assess the students’ motions that they choose for the accented beats
based on if they are louder or softer than the steady beats, using the same +/- scale.
 3. The Teacher will assess the students’ differentiation of steady beats and accented beats
based on if they are able to switch between the steady beat and the accented beat with
minimal hesitation, using the same +/- scale.
4. The teacher will assess the students two-measure phrase based on if they use accented
and unaccented beats with the correct motions, using the same +/- scale.
VII. Further Learning:
1. Students can try this exercise but with other motions for the steady beats or the accented
beats.
2. Students can try this exercise with other songs or pieces of music.
VIII. Honor Code:
1. I affirm that I will uphold the highest principles of honesty and integrity in all my
endeavors at Gettysburg College, and foster an atmosphere of mutual respect within and
beyond the classroom. -Sally Fetterman