Students in most of the grade levels have been working on rhythmic notation in music classes, with many students able to read quite complicated rhythms! Most students use the inherent rhythms built into language to learn to read and perform each note or set of notes. Feel free to ask your child about “blue”, “jello”, or maybe even “huckleberry”. They might even be able to show you what each looks like.
This week, Grade 5 used a small bag of manipulative to create, share, and recreate rhythms in small groups. They surprised Mr. Griebenow by being able to listen to rhythms created by other groups, and then re-construct the rhythmic notation with their own manipulatives. This is a tough skill that was supposed to stretch their learning, but almost every group created the correct rhythm with little help! Wowza!
