Just like learning to draw letters and numbers, drawing musical notes takes practice. At this center students use dry erase markers and a 16 block grid in our lap packs to practice drawing quarter notes. In Kindergarten and First grades we call quarter notes "ta" and know that if we could draw steady beat it would look like a reeeeeally long line of ta notes. :-)
How many students do you have in a group? Do you rotate centers after a certain amount of time? Do the students get through all the centers in one class period? Thanks for all the ideas!
ReplyDeleteI like to have students work in groups of 3-4. For some classes this means that I would need 8-10 centers to accommodate them all. With the youngest grades the classes are smaller so I may plan 4 centers.
ReplyDeleteWith K-1 I will plan 4-6 centers and divide the students into groups of 3-4. We would (most likely) do these in one class period spending about 10 minutes per station.
With 2nd and up I will create 8-10 centers. We will spend 9-12 minutes at each one and plan to spend two class periods.
I've also done centers with 5th and 6th grades and they handle transitions better so we can move to a new station in less than a minute. The younger ones need a bit longer until the get the hang of it. I see my students one time a week for 50 minutes.