Having elementary students memorize music and be concert ready can be tricky and time-consuming. This post will give you multiple tips and techniques, including incentives, checklists, and games, for learning and memorizing music to prepare your students for a concert.
The Playlist…
Learning the Music
Here are tips to help students learn their concert music. You can use teaching techniques, games, incentives, and challenges to keep the lessons varied and interesting.
Rhythm, Melody, and Lyrics Techniques
- Project lyrics using Google Slides or PowerPoint in grades 2 and above. For PreK-Grade 1 you can project some key words/image icons that begin phrases although many times, I taught the songs by rote with no projection. I tried to pick songs for the younger kids that had lots of repetition so learning the text wasn’t a problem.
- Have students analyze the text looking for repetition, similarities, and differences.
- Let students find the rhyming words and use color-coding on your slides.
- Depending on the song, you may want to echo sing phrases, learn by listening to a recording, practice a few probable melody or rhythm trouble spots with echoing.
- If the song is wordy, learn the chorus first and then slowly add the verses.
- Sing a cappella sometimes so they can really hear themselves and the class.
- As much as possible, do not sing with them. They will become stronger singers as you get away from singing with them or using full-performance tracks.
- It’s really hard for kids to learn a song by repeatedly singing with a full-performance track. A full performance track can be an introduction to the song. Use the accompaniment track if you aren’t using piano, guitar, other, etc.
Now that the melody/rhythms are sung correctly…
Tips to Memorize the Music
- Hide the last couple of words in each phrase to begin the memorization process. Hide more words and eventually, you will be down to the first word in each phrase and then I’d sometimes take it down to the initial letter of the first word in each phrase.
- Adding choreography or some kind of motion (especially with younger children) will help bring the words to life and help them remember. (sometimes this can occur in the learning the melody/rhythm phase)
- Play an elimination passing game with the song. Sitting in a circle, pass a single item (such as a ball) around the circle to the beat as you sing the song. By the time you are down to your winner, they will KNOW the lyrics! (Beat-passing game tips)
- Use small circles-Have students stand in small circles with their friends (or not) and see if their group can sing through the entire song. If needed, put a ringer in each group as a “leader” to make sure that it isn’t an entire group of non-singers who almost immediately give up.
Incentives, Challenges, & Checklists: Performance-Ready Tips
Create and display a checklist. This really drives home some finer points to teach your kids appropriate concert practice. It adds a little subtle competition too that kids usually enjoy.
The goal is to get everything checked off in the top rows and once that is done, the STARS! area gets a big CHECK or STAR in it. Some areas are subdivided because once is just NOT enough to say they have that down.
This checklist is for ONE song in four classes of fourth grade.
- Sing with lyrics means that they can correctly sing melody/rhythms while looking at the projected words.
- Memorized-Correctly sing melody/rhythm and all lyrics with no aids.
- Know motions-If most had them down I’d check it off. If only 2/3s performed the motions correctly, I would not check it off.
- Begin & End Quietly-It is some kind of unwritten kid rule that as soon as a song is over it means, “Let’s turn and talk to anyone and everyone.” If anyone talked during the introduction or 5 seconds after the last note ended, they did not get this checked off. I subdivided this area because doing it one time did not drive home the point.
- Expression-This is a hard one. I just said to use your eyes and remember that you are telling a story for the people in the audience. At the end of songs sometimes I’d use a student as an example. “I kept looking at Dominique because I could tell from her eyes and how she was singing and moving that she wanted me to love the song. Great expression, Dominique.”
- Focus-Look at the teacher. Ignore people around you who are distracting.
- Stars! If all the above items are checked off, this is the final one to end the checklist.
The Finer Points
Do you need 100% perfection to check it off? Here’s my take.
On the memorization, as a group, YES!
On motions, no. I’d tell the kids that if most all of you had it down, I’d check it off. They always breathed a sigh of relief because they really wanted that check and didn’t want someone who was having a bad day or being obstinate or shy or whatever to hold them back.
If they do not deserve a check, don’t give it to them. However, I kept the forward momentum going by using PENCIL checks. Instead of our colorful marker, I’d put a pencil check and tell them it was SO close and I knew they’d get their marker check soon!
Here’s a checklist made from chart paper and taped on a closet door of my classroom.
If your checklist is on a slide instead of hanging in the room, how cool to use fun icons for your checks!
Interactive Games for Concert Song Memorization
Spinning Choice Wheels
No UGHS uttered from students as you repeat songs for practice using this spinning wheel! Start with a teacher-created wheel but then let your students create a wheel. Here’s one I created!
My Wheel Entries:
- Sing with eyes closed.
- Teacher only helps with motions.
- Teacher only helps with singing.
- Sing with smiles on your faces the entire time.
- Hum the entire song.
- Sing standing on one foot.
- Sing lying on your back.
- Student judges (2-4) give an Olympic rating. (Gold, silver, bronze)
- Sing the entire song on “la.”
- Sing as you step around the room.
- With class divided in half, sing alternating phrases.
- With class divided into right and left halves, sing only when the teacher holds up their right or left (or both) arms.
Preparing Students On a Limited Schedule
What If I Only See My Students Once a Week?
A well-received concert reaps many benefits so I think it’s worth it to devote all your class time to the preparation. Your problem is having enough prep time and carryover learning from week to week.
🔹 Save time by using some songs that were learned first semester. Rewrite lyrics to make them fit your concert theme or keep your theme very open to include all types of songs. Call it Spring Sing!
🔹 Arrange your songs so they are longer. Sing with words the first time through, then hum the second time, then back to singing the words. Or, first time is tutti, second is a solo, and last is tutti again. I’ve taken accompaniments and dropped them in Soundtrap and copied portions to increase their length. This can take a song you think is way too short for a concert and make it work.
🔹 Use songs they already know. I did A Million Dreams from the Greatest Showman when it was first out and trending so most of the kids already knew it and it was a real crowd pleaser and quick to put together.
🔹 Use cumulative song classics like She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain. They’re longer and easy to remember.
🔹 Use as many kids at once as you can. Instead of fourth grade then fifth grade, can you get them all on stage together? Kids who know the songs pull the rest along.
🔹 In keeping with that theory, let’s say you need to teach a grade level three songs. Don’t begin teaching Song A to each class. If you have three third grades, concentrate on a different song (Song B and Song C) for each. You’re going to try to get to every song for all but if you run short of time, you have 1/3 (or 2/3) of your grade level really strong on each song.
🔹 Put your class of strongest singers in the middle.
I’m not going to recommend making recordings for the classrooms teachers to help you or for kids to access to practice at home. I really don’t think you get your bang for the buck on that effort.
In Case of Emergency
If you didn’t start learning your music soon enough or stuff just happened, here are some emergency measures.
- If the kids don’t know the words, especially the verses, put a strong singer on a microphone for the verses as the rest of the kids sing along too. Not a true solo but just support.
- Put key first words on a giant piece of paper and hang it on the back of your music stand (or piano) or somewhere where they can see it but is unobtrusive.
- Quietly speak the first word or two of the next phrase, a beat or two before they sing it. You can feed them their lines like this in a pretty unobtrusive way.
- Begin motions a beat or two BEFORE the kids are meant to do them. This gives them thinking time to get THEIR hands in place.
- You are going to have some classes that have a big beautiful sound and some classes…that do NOT! It’s amazing how each class has its own musical personality! If you have 3 sections of fourth grade, I’d put the strongest in the middle of the risers and then the other two classes on either side.
If you need any help or have any questions, send me an email or comment below!
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Other Concert Season Links
- Stage Design & Decorations
- Dazzling Lights for a Fun Concert Vibe
- Concert Checklist Months before up to the day of!
Hi. Could you share your options on your wheel for practicing songs?
Shannon, I’ve listed them under the wheel and also put a new link which should take you to the wheel. Thanks for the question!