Running head: TEACHING MOVEMENT AND RHYTHM

Teaching Movement and Rhythm

Carmen Garcia

Fresno Pacific University

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Teaching Movement and Rhythm

I recall a day when I was teaching Sunday school, I had a student named Clarissa that

was having difficulty clapping her hands to the songs we were singing. When the children had

free play I sat on the floor with the CD player inviting children to come and sing songs with me

and I sent out a personal invite to Clarissa. When the children had decided to accept the invite, I

ended up with two children, Clarissa and Antonina. This was great for me because I only had six

rhythm sticks for both of them and myself. I started by playing and singing a song with

instructions in the lyrics. The song was If youre Happy and you know it. When the song

instructed us to clap our hands, she was having difficulty clapping her hands to the rhythm. After

the song was over I suggested clapping our names out using the model, I do, we do, you do. I

started by clapping my name out Tea-cher Car-men, then we did it together and finally the two

girls were able to clap out my name by themselves. Antonina went first using the same model

clapping her name and then Clarissa followed clapping her hands five times with her name. We

followed her clapping, but Antonina clapped Clarissas name correctly and Clarissa listened to

how Antonina clapped her name. When it was Clarissas turn again she clapped out her name

correctly. Both girls loved playing this game with me. I knew it was time to step up this game.

When Clarissa was ready, I brought out the rhythm sticks. We used the sticks to tap our

names out. Both girls enjoyed the sound the rhythm sticks made. The girls were soon both

tapping out rhythms to just about any word they could think of. My favorite word they tapped

out was Bubba Guppies Babies.

This activity is not something new I just learned in the textbook. I have done activities

like this many times to help children needing just a little extra support in catching the rhythm.

From this point on, as the lead teacher, I would then introduce easy dancing to my class knowing
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that all my children can now clap to the rhythm. My next step is to move our bodies to the

rhythm.