If you've never done a Write the Room activity before, your music class will forever be changed! In this post I am going to explain what Write the Room is, how I've used it in my music classroom, and a freebie for you to start using in your classroom!
What is Write the Room?
Write the Room is the perfect combination of treasure hunting and rhythm finding for students. Essentially, before class you hide slips of paper around the room. You then hand out a piece of paper to your students that has blank pieces for them to fill out (see below)
I usually have them partner up, and they use this paper to write down what they find on the hidden slips of paper.
Possible Options:
With my freebie that I am going to give you, there are a few options. One is to use just the rhythm notes, another is to use rhythm syllables, and the third is to combine both.
For 1st & 2nd grade, I just did the rhythm notes. When they were done, they had to come up to me and either clap out the pattern correctly or tell me what each of the notes were. You can do whatever works for your classroom and for what they have learned.
For 3rd and up I did a combination, which basically I had half the class find the rhythm notes while the other class found the rhythm syllables and then they had to translate what they found.
Ex: those finding rhythm syllables may have found Ta Ta Ta for number 8. They then had to translate this into the correct rhythm notes on their page, so they would write down three quarter notes.
Make it a Competition:
A little competition always motivates! Whomever found all 8 slips of paper and correctly copied them down was the winner. The nice thing about my freebie is that all of the rhythms are in 3/4 time, so you can either have a master copy of the slips of paper or just make sure that each section adds up to 3/4 in music.
Great for Assessment
Write the Room is great for assessing your students to see where they are in their comprehension of rhythms and rhythm notation. You can see which students have a good grasp on it and which students are struggling.
To get my Write the Room freebie (cactus themed!) you can sign up for my newsletter and get the access code to my resource library which has other freebies as well!
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