For music teachers, the beginning of the school year means returning to most of the same students from previous grade level, while welcoming in some students who are new to the district or have transferred from another school within the district. Students are happy to be physically reunited with their friends, but they are also out of practice in being a functioning part of a class of 25-30 individuals. So this time of year is a good time to use classroom activities that allow students to ease back into to working cooperatively with each other. 

One of my favorite activities of this type is some sort of partner game. Essentially, each student is given half of something, and they have to find the classmate that has the other half. For example, give each student a three by five card with either a musical term or a definition on it. Students must interact with each other to find who has the match to their card. If one student has a card that says “Allegro,” then they must find the student who has the card that says “fast.” In the course of finding their match, students must interact with other students, at the very least, asking them what they have on their card. It’s also possible to have the antecedent phrases of familiar songs on some cards, and the consequent phrases on other cards. When the two are matched, they form the complete phrase. With younger children you can include the words to the song, with older students who can sight sing or sight sing on an Orff instrument or keyboard, leave the words off so they have to play or sing their cards to find the match. I have found that putting a time limit on each round of this game keeps the students on task; they want to find the match before time runs out. Without a time limit, they tend to get off task, simply socializing on their way around the room.

Another type of game is used to review or teach classroom procedures. One of this kind is what I call “talk-stop.” The class is told to start talking. (You may be amused by their shock at being asked to talk rather than to stop talking!) They can talk to anybody about anything, but they must stay in their seats and talk to only the people immediately around them. When you raise your hand all talking must stop immediately. When the class has practiced this with you a few times, begin selecting individual students to come forward and be the one that raises their hand. Students love having this kind of control over their peers, and if the class doesn’t quiet down they also get to experience how frustrating that is, and understand that it is also frustrating for the teacher when that happens. This game can get silly and fun if the hand is raised and lowered quickly. Be sure to change leaders often and only allow silly quickness after some practical time intervals have been practiced. Practical intervals are 10-15 seconds to talk before the hand is raised to silence the class. If students begin to get less responsive to student leaders, step in and take a few turns before continuing with other students.

Passing out and collecting materials can create “dead space” in a lesson. Assigning these tasks to students frees you up to continue teaching. Pass out paper to each student, teach them how you want them to pass them in by handing them down their row and having the last person in the row hold the stack in the air for you to retrieve. This becomes a game when each row is timed and competes for who can get it done the fastest. You might even give prizes for the best row, if your school allows. 

Because of its communal nature, I like starting out the year with drum circles and bucket drumming. Drumming is something everyone can do, even after having the summer off. Unlike band, for example, which definitely shows the summer neglect, drumming sounds good right away, and students enjoy playing off each other when they are allowed to improvise. Start with a specified ostinato pattern on a few instruments, and then just let it grow from there. With less willing classes, do short call and response patterns, so they don’t have to improvise over long time-spans, and then gradually increase the length of the responses until they are improvising freely. I spent many years teaching in an urban district, where bucket drumming was very popular. With my middle school and upper elementary students, I could pick a leader and then just watch and enjoy. Having student led drumming activities quickly establishes cohesive, cooperative, and collaborative relationships between students in the class.  

Later on in the year, once a class has been improvising on drums, band students can be invited to improvise on their instruments. Some will be eager to play in the more popular style of improvising, while others will not be comfortable with it. It should always be voluntary for those band students. Of course, other more accessible instruments, such as Orff instruments and Boomwacker sets can also be used for improvising over a drum circle. 

At the beginning of the school year, it’s important to review things from the previous year, or even previous years. Good musicianship depends on handling expressive terms well in performance. It is pointless to simply test students on definitions if they are not called upon to perform them expressively. For this activity, choose a song the class already knows well. Then have students apply a different musical term to their singing of it each time. For example, take the song “Rocky Mountain,” and have them sing the whole song staccato. Of course, it will sound odd, even comical, which is part of the fun, but it will also lead to the opportunity to explore and discover where staccato would actually sound good in the song, and where it wouldn’t. Apply a terms opposite next. Teaching what something is by what it isn’t is a good strategy. So now “Rocky Mountain” gets sung all very legato, and a similar discussion can be had on where that is appropriate. Do the same with dynamic and tempo markings. When all have been reviewed, students can then make choices of which terms to apply and where to apply them. It’s not only a good way to review vocabulary, but you are also teaching musicianship at the same time. 

All of these classroom activities are both fun and substantive. Important learning takes place while engaging in them, and interest level is kept high because of the enjoyment factor. Learning, especially in music class, should never be boring, pedantic, or perfunctory. These activities, and others like them that you may come up with, get your school year off to a good start.