Marvelous Music Map Making!

Lesson #5: Sally Go Round the Sun

Yesterday I made another visit out to Spanish Oaks Elementary! Our lesson today was centered around the short and simple song "Sally Go Round the Sun." I was taught this lesson by Dr. Brittney May in one of my Music Education classes at BYU. So instead of being the student, this time I was the teacher!

Song + Movement

The students gathered in as large of a circle as the classroom would permit and I taught them this song. The lyrics are:

Sally go round the sun,

Sally go round the moon, 

Sally go round the chimney pot

every afternoon--boom!

After singing through the song once, I picked three students to stand in the middle of the circle. Each student held a piece of paper with one of the objects in the song drawn on it (a sun, a moon, a chimney pot). I sang the song and while I sang, walked around each student (going "round" the sun, moon, and chimney pot). When I got to "boom!", I was standing back in my original spot in the circle of students. 

Next the students got to sing and move along with me. I chose children by birthday months to make sure everyone got a turn in the middle.

Mini-Preposition Lesson:

Next I suggested to the class that maybe we could substitute a different word for "round." One child suggested "over." So then the students holding the objects laid down on the floor while other students sang:

Sally go over the sun,

Sally go over the moon,

Sally go over the chimney pot

every afternoon--boom!

 One student correctly identified "round" and "over" as a preposition! If we had more time, we would have done more playing around with changing out prepositions.

Making the Map

Students then sat in their circles and I reminded them of two weeks ago when we all followed the Harry Potter music map. I told them today they would be creating a map kind of like that using "Sally Go Round the Sun."

Each student received a whiteboard to write on, a piece of paper, and a marker. I showed them how to draw an 'X' in the top left corner of their paper--this is where their map would begin. They would start their map there and then would move their marker continuously on the paper until the song ended. We practiced once with tracing our finger and then did the real thing. Later on, the students traced their maps and then added in pictures of the sun, the moon, and the chimney pot in accordance to where they happened in the song. Here are some examples of what the kids came up with:

Switch-er-roo

Next the students were to swap papers with their neighbors and would trace their neighbors' maps. This was a lesson for me. I instructed the students to pass their papers one person to the right. This was much more of a difficult task than I anticipated it would be: I learned to always make sure everyone knows which way is right to begin with. :) Eventually the kids were able to trace another map besides their own!

Conclusion:

The students learned a new song, did movement to the song, and then created a music map for it. Creating the map required that they listened to the general melody and shape of the melody. We briefly talked as a class how the maps they made were different from one another. Although all the students heard the same song being sung, different people interpret and visualize music differently--in a way that makes the most sense to them.