Sarah Stoutamyer

PT2 Lesson Plan: Down by the Riverside

Basic Information
Teacher: Sarah Stoutamyer
Grade Level: Elementary (4th grade)
Teaching Date & Time: November 13th

Prerequisite Knowledge and Skills for this lesson

Students have learned the terms accelerando and ritardando and can apply them to a song.
Students can identify how fast moving water and slow moving water are different.

Content and Achievement Standards

1. Singing alone and with others in the class.
a. Students sing independently with both correct pitch and rhythm, and also with
good posture and keeping a steady beat.
2. Reading and notating music.
b. Students identify the use of accelerando and ritardando.
3. Listening to and identifying lyrics and specific things that happen in the music.

Behavioral Objective(s)
At the end of this lesson, students will be able to:
 Sing Down by the Riverside (pg.173) accurately and with expression from memory.
 Accurately preform accelerando and ritardando when singing the song.
 Define the terms accelerando and ritardando.

Materials
Song of Down by the Riverside (pg. 173 mm. 1-15)
Labels accel., rit., and circles rests in song.

Procedures
0.0 Set
Intro: Referring to last lesson where I asked you to sing what a fire sounded like Ask
what sounds a river makes. What does it sound like when a water rushes in a fast
running river? What about a slow creek?
a. Have class make sounds that are fast and then slow (referring to water)
 Sing Down by the Riverside
a. Give scale with solfege (G Major) then state the starting pitch (B natural)
having the class match the pitch I give them.
b. Have the class keep a steady beat throughout the song.
 Sing first half of the song
a. Have class repeat with me the first half.
 Sing second half of song
 a. Have the class sing the second half of the song with me.
 Ask if there were any questions with lyrics, pitches, etc.
 Question: Where am I? What am I doing?
 Referring back to the beginning of the lesson, what musical terms were I referring
to? (Accelerando and ritardando)
Sarah Stoutamyer
PT2 Lesson Plan: Down by the Riverside
 Ask what those terms mean.
 Accelerando: with a gradual increase in speed
Ritardando: with a gradual decrease in speed.
 Sing whole song again. (By themselves but provide pitches and tempo)
 Apply accelerando and ritardando into song. (Have class stand up)
 Explaining that the lyrics “Down by the Riverside” are going to be faster than the
other lyrics.
 Sing song with applied terms (accelerando and ritardando)
a. With and then once without me.
End