Are you looking for quick and easy assessments for your music classroom? In this blog post, I am writing about three assessments for your elementary music lessons, all using the song “Bounce High.” Make sure to keep reading until the end, to download the rubrics for each assessment, as well as more details (such as a link to a download with a Seesaw activity!)
The song “Bounce High” is a favorite with students in K-2. Here is the song notation and the game directions:
Game: Students stand in a circle. One student bounces a playground ball twice—one for the first “bounce” and another for the second “bounce.” On the third “bounce,” that student bounces the ball to another child and sits down. The game continues until all child have had a turn; the last student bounces the ball back to the teacher.
Variation 1: Instead of “Shiloh,” the students sing the name of the child the ball is being bounced to.
Variation 2: Like variation 1, but the student with the ball solo sings the name of the child the ball is being bounced to.
Assessment #1: Solo singing
If playing the variation 2 game, you could use the song as a solo singing assessment. As students have a turn solo singing, you could be marking down how well they are matching pitch. The wonderful thing about an assessment like this is they have no idea they are being assessed, because they are playing a game! You could play until all students have had a turn, or you could spread out the game over a few lessons (which will keep their attention a bit better, and will allow you to catch any students who are absent in other lessons.)
Assessment #2: Rhythmic dictation
This song is great for ta and ti-ti, or quarter notes and eighth notes. Once students know these rhythms, you can have students dictate the rhythm to the song using popsicle sticks, like seen here; you can read more about them in this blog post.
If students are working with a partner, it could be a formative assessment (an assessment used to gauge understanding.) if you are further along with the concept and want to use it as a summative assessment, you could have students working individually with the popsicle sticks, either as a whole class or in centers.
Assessment #3: Melodic writing
This song is also great for melody, as it uses only sol, mi, and la. To assess melodic writing, you could have students use mini ball erasers like these; see this blog post for more info about mini erasers.
You could also use solfa manipulatives to assess melodic understanding, which could assess their knowledge of solfege and melodic contour, without the staff.
Want more details about these three assessments, along with a link to a Seesaw activity for melodic activity and rubrics for each assessment? Sign up here:
Happy teaching!
