Great big house in New Orleans,
Forty stories high.
Every room that I've been in
Filled with chicken pie.
First, we talked about the lyrics. The song is obviously a work of fiction. We did some math to figure out that we would need to add 38 floors on top of our Primary School to make it as tall as this house. Imagine how long it would take to get up that many stairs!
Once we understood the lyrics, we added a repeating pattern, called an ostinato, to the song. Students were able to read the notation and figure out the rhythm of our ostinato all by themselves. We learned that when our pattern is only a rhythm it is called a rhythmic ostinato.
Here is the notation the students decoded.
Listen to Mrs. McCance's class perform Great Big House with a rhythmic ostinato.
Once we were comfortable with the rhythmic ostinato, we added some pitches to the rhythm to create a melodic ostinato. Again, students were able to read the notation from the board and sight-sing this melody.
Listen to Mrs. Whittemore's class perform Great Big House with a melodic ostinato.
