A Reflective Lens: Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice | Page 79

A Reflective Lens:
Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice

Bearing in mind the notion of play and structured play, the
pupils were systematically taught using songs with so-mila-do as the initial building block. Songs were accompanied
by games and specific tone sets (See Appendix 1). Pupils
were taught solfège with hand signs, and musical concepts
such as stepping the pulse, clapping the rhythm and pulse,
note value, quarter rest, bar lines and times signature. They
also learnt to play the different games through clapping,
composing, and creating new lyrics to the clapping games.
Here are two examples of how singing games were used:

A. Freezing game
In lesson two, my learning objective was to
teach the quarter rest. To allow my pupils to
experience it, I introduced the “Teddy Bear”
song through rote singing. At the end of each
phrase, they had to freeze. I made use of the
freezing game everyone was very familiar with.
My pupils were to walk on the pulse and at
the end of the phrase, they struck a pose and
froze in position! The only guideline for them
was to respect their friends, that was, not to
touch their friends when playing the game,
but they could be as creative as they wished in
their poses. I first “demo-ed” with some silly
poses which prompted my pupils with some
ideas and everyone had a good laugh. Then it
was their turn. There were squeals of laughter
as my pupils played the singing game. I had
to remind them that it was a singing game and
they should be singing and not laughing! At
the end of the lesson, my pupils had sung the
“Teddy bear” song countless times without
complaint, and in fact, they wanted to continue
playing! By the end of the exercise, they had
internalised the tone set, had experienced the
quarter rest, and were able to point it out when
we went on to sing the solfège of the song.

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B. Chasing game
In the lesson where I was
teaching them to sight-read
“Mouse, Mousie”, my pupils
played a game “Duck, Duck,
Goose” after they successfully
learned the song. They first
sang the song for a few rounds,
aiming to be nominated as the
best singer. The selected child
then walked and clapped on
the pulse, circling around the
others who were seated in a
big circle, and the last person
who was tapped at the end
of the song then ran in the
opposite direction. My pupils
loved this game! They wanted
to play it repeatedly. They
sang the song countless times
over, and cheered for their
friends who were running. They
had fun; enjoying the musical
game yet learning. They were
internalising the intervallic leap
of the fifth apart, from so to do.