We started out by learning the song Are You Sleeping? in English:
Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?
Brother John, Brother John.
Morning bells are ringing, Morning bells are ringing,
Ding, ding, dong, Ding, ding, dong.
Hear Mrs. Whittemore's class sing this song in the video below.
When we were comfortable with the tune, students were introduced to the French version of this song, Frère Jacques. Students were delighted to be singing in another language.
Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines
Ding ding dong, ding ding dong.
Mrs. Whittemore's class also performed this one for you to hear.
Next, we added a rhythmic ostinato (repeating pattern) to this song. Students patted on their laps, alternating hands - right, left, right... right, left, right.
Given four beats, students were able to figure out the rhythm of this ostinato, shown below.
What belonged on that last beat though? We would need to learn a new rhythm to figure this out. A beat without a sound is called a "rest." We will call it "sh" for now to make speaking our rhythms easier. We added the "sh" to our ostinato like this:
We know that a rest does not really look like that, but just as we use a shorthand for our "ta", we want to make drawing a rest easy for now too.
Hear Mrs. Curci's class perform this rhythmic ostinato below:
Finally, we turned our rhythmic ostinato into a melodic ostinato - a repeating pattern with a tune that we could sing. Students were tasked with finding a line of the song that we already knew that had the same rhythm as our rhythmic ostinato. We decided that "Ding, ding, dong" was the best fit and added it to the song as a melodic ostinato.
Hear Mrs. Curci's class perform this version as well in the video below.
Do you think we have learned enough from this song yet? We will be coming back to it before the end of the year to use while we explore our Orff instruments (xylophones, metallophones, and glockenspiel). I can't wait!
