Thumping Thursday: Using body percussion to get students moving and musical

While your students may not be
'Stomp,' they may already be familiar
with body percussion.

As a musician, I love introducing music in the classroom. Lately I have re-discovered the beauty of body percussion. Need to re-discover it yourself? Here's the YouTube playlist I have compiled to inspire me. While our students may not be quite musically inclined or have the talent enabling them to perform a Stomp number in assembly, it's easy to see how much some students enjoy body percussion. See those girls doing hand claps during recess? That's body percussion right there! Add in a few masculine yells to a war dance and even the boys will get on board. In fact, when I introduced a combination of body percussion and yelling into a kinder room they didn't stop until they were sore!

So here's a small group activity to get them noisy, musical, active and engaged. I hope your rooms are somewhat sound proof or you may want to take it to the auditorium or outside.

Begin by standing the group in a circle. Explore as a group what sounds you can make using your body (and if you want, you can add voice and just ban 'singing real words' and see what they come out with). As the students explore different sounds, suggest they try making one sound different by changing speed, force, direction, etc. They can even change the way their hands sound by making them flat or cupped. Once you feel you have a variety of noises, start to describe and categorise them, especially by loud and quiet. For example, quite noises could be brushing their arms, rubbing their hands together, or scooting across the floor/ground. Bringing them back to the circle (as they may have moved around a bit by now) ask three people to start with a quiet action, repeating it in a pattern. After a few repeats, add another small group with another noise pattern. Remember, you may ask some to make noises, even if they are just saying, "do... do do... do do." This will add another layer to the music. Continue this until everyone is making a pattern. Congratulate them on creating a song together!

After completing this as a group, you may split the class into small groups to create their own body percussion songs.

As an extra exploration activity, you can play a variation on a well-known detective game. Send someone out of the room and nominate a student as the 'conductor.' They begin an action (body percussion) and the rest of the class follows like an orchestra. After this is going, invite the detective in to discover the conductor. In order to avoid detection when changing the sound, the conductor will usually only get away with a quieter sound or the detective will know what area they are in. Due to this, the best strategy is to start loud and get quieter and quieter until the actions are almost silent.

Repeat symbols

An an extension activity, you can begin introducing basic notation. Invent symbols as a class to represent symbols such as a clap, silence (rest), stomp, etc. Begin with simple beats and then begin to change speeds, etc. Problem solve as a class how you can show the same instrument at played using different timing or pitch, how to show dynamics (loud and soft), and ways of showing a pattern repeats (without actually writing it out 50 times).

Here is an example of musical notation from Music with Mrs. Dennis.
While creating musical notation with the students, you may start off with their own symbols
and slowly introduce a more formal approach such as this.