Now all of this to say that teaching a song by rote is not supposed to be boring. It’s supposed to be engaging, and as a matter of fact, the only way that we can be successful in having our students sing a song independently is if they are engaged, listening, and responding to the music making. So what does the process for teaching a song look like?

Step 1 – Opportunities for Listening

If we’re teaching our students predominantly by rote, that means that they are learning by watching and imitating. In music, this means that students are aurally engaged in the song material.

But we as music teachers know that just asking students to “listen” doesn’t necessarily warrant the type of active, attentive listening we’re hoping for. The solution is giving students something to listen for, whether it’s through a story or asking questions.

Telling a story to introduce a song is finding a way to thematically tie in a literal story to the song you’re wishing to teach. For example, if I’m getting ready to teach the rhyme “Bee Bee Bumble Bee,” I might begin this step by saying something like this:

“I was walking into my backyard yesterday, and all of the sudden I heard this buzzing sound! I turned around, and what do you know…Bee Bee Bumble Bee…” etc.

“Whew. I got away from that bee. So I went along my way, getting ready to water my flowers. I saw that the pink ones had bloomed, and the purple, and then I turned toward the red flowers and I saw a… Bee Bee Bumble Bee…” and so on. By finding a way to tell a story, you not only have students attention, but you draw their attention to the words of the song or rhyme.

In the same way that telling a story draws attention to the words of a new song, asking students questions about the song is a way to focus students on particular sections, what we’ll call musical ideas, of the song.

Perhaps after telling the brief story above, you might ask students, “what was buzzing in my yard? You’re right, a bee! This time I want you to listen to my rhyme and tell me what that bee was doing… Bee Bee Bumble Bee…”

“Put your hand on your head if you know what that bee was doing! Yes he was stinging people. This time I want you to listen and tell me one of the two people he stung… Bee Bee Bumble Bee…“

“Tap your pointer fingers together if you know who the bee stung. Yes, one was the man’s knee, and the other was the pig’s snout.”

Now that you’ve drawn students’ attention to the words of the rhyme, and they have a solid context for what is to come, it’s time to break down the song and teach it by rote.

Note: In the past I’ve talked about 7 ways to teach a song, and if you’re looking for more ideas, you can check that post out here. But if this is a brand new process, I recommend using either the story or questioning model.

Step 2 – Breaking it Down by Musical Idea

Now that students have heard the rhyme a number of times, it’s time to break it down by musical ideas. In early elementary, musical ideas refers to a motive or phrase that is easily chunked for students to work with. In the instance of this rhyme, there are sixteen beats and each musical idea is four beats long.

Students will have the opportunity to practice the song through echo imitation of each musical idea, and then stringing the ideas together bit by bit until we have the complete song or rhyme. You might know this process as “your turn, my turn” or “lining out.” Although this is not the most engaging or meaningful way to teach a song, it’s a useful tool embedded with other methods (like storytelling and questioning that we’ve already done) to ensure that students can independently perform song material.

Bee Bee Bumble Bee could be broken down in this way:

Teacher motions “my turn, your turn”

(1) Bee Bee Bumble Bee (T says, students echo)

(2) Stung a man upon knee

(3) Stung a pig upon his snout

(4) I declare that you are out!

Teacher motions that we’ll echo longer ideas now

(1) Bee bee bumble bee, stung a man upon his knee

(2) Stung a pig upon his snout, I declare that you are out!

Teacher motions that the ideas will be even longer

“Bee bee bumble bee, stung a man upon his knee, stung a pig upon his snout, I declare that you are out!”

At this point, students will likely have most of the rhyme under their belt, but there may be a couple of places that they don’t quite have mastered. This is why the third step is to ensure that students have learned the rhyme in the way that we plan to use it in our music classroom.

Step 3 – Student Feedback & Remediation

If there is a section of the new song or rhyme that students don’t seem to be completely confident in, now is the time to do some remediation. That is, we back up and reteach the rhyme, and/or talk about some of the tricky words in the rhyme.

Bee Bee Bumble Bee can be a tricky one, because of the words “upon” and “declare.” Those might be new words to them. Also, the final musical idea includes the words “you are out” and most students will probably realize that this is some sort of game, because they know all too well what it means to get out.

After touching on a couple of these vocabulary words, and perhaps going back through the quick breakdown of musical ideas with echo imitation, the most effective form of remediation in my experience is to (1) let this simmer until next class, or (2) play the game. Depending on where this new song lies in your lesson flow will determine which path you take on any given day. Remember that oftentimes our brain needs that rest time to process new information, including new songs.