Saturday, October 22, 2011

Using a metronome in the classroom


My classes have been fascinated by the metronome on my iphone. We have been using it to check if we can clap exactly on the beat and to check we aren't speeding up. I was surprised how soothing it was and for how long kids needed to listen before they could internalise the beat. A simple warm up somehow took up the whole of the lesson. However I was happy to let it over run as the children were concentrating so hard and a few of them seemed genuinely overjoyed at their new found ability to accent different beats. I used the metronome in conjunction with MES cards which show different 4 beat bars.

This has left me wondering if I should n't make the effort to use a metronome more often with all my classes. I have yet to find one for the smartboard but have bought a visual metronome app ( see pic above) for my ipad which I think the kids will love!

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