This Train

So, my friend Tanya LeJeune and I visited a teacher store yesterday afternoon.  Really, it was a lot of fun browsing the aisles with a good friend who's also an amazing teacher and getting her opinions on possible manipulatives.  (If you haven't heard of Tanya be sure to check out her website and blog!!  She has some amazing SmartBoard files for download and purchase as well as book suggestions, manipulative ideas and great teaching strategies.)

We came across some really cute die cuts of tickets and then a bigger die cut of buckets of popcorn.  We both bought some, not really knowing what exactly we're going to use them with (don't we all do this from time to time, lol!).  It's been lingering in the back of my mind all day of how I'm going to use them.  Well, I've come up with an idea for the tickets, but it's unrelated to the popcorn so I made a PowerPoint for this idea.

I took the "train" route.  That is, I decided to relate the tickets to a train instead of to relating it to a movie theater or baseball game or such, which is where my mind was originally going.  Engine Engine would have been really cute, but it wouldn't provide a good assessment for the way I'm going to use it because rhythmically all the phrases are the same.  Chicka Hanka would be fun, but it's tricky to use with this because of being a call/response song and a part song.  So, that led me to This Train.  

It's a great spiritual for reinforcing extended do pentatonic and for ti-tom. . . although it's more advance because it has ti-tom tied to a half note.  I will use this in late 4th grade after syn-co-pa and ti-tom have both been presented and we are in late practice of ti-tom.

Here's how it will work.  I print out the following pictures on card stock, cut them into individual tickets and make enough sets of the cards for students to work either individually or in pairs.  By themselves or with a partner they will decode the cards and place them in the correct rhythmic and melodic order.  

You can download the PDF of this file at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

These are the cards that I will use, with both the rhythm and solfa:

If you're wanting to only work on rhythm or melody, use the appropriate card sets below: