In Concert Choir (all freshman and first-year choir students) we were having difficulties engaging students in sight-reading (what educator doesn’t). I saw on Facebook a post about how a teacher put a familiar tune on the board and students had to guess what the melody was without making a sound. At first, I was suspicious about the students’ engagement, but after introducing the activity, they loved it!
Here’s how it works:
- Dictate 4 to 8 measures of a familiar melody.
- Give a time limit for answers
- Have students write down their guess and their name
We had the students who guessed correctly earn a certain number of points depending on the difficulty of the tune. Then, we had a leaderboard on the whiteboard. This was not worth a grade, but a way to gamify the classroom and further engage our students in sight-reading!