Rhythmic Building Bricks or Blocks are often used as compositional tools in elementary music classrooms.
Developed by Carl Orff's fellow teacher, Gunild Keetman, these simple 2-beat patterns use quarter notes, quarter rests, and paired eighth notes (and sometimes a half note). These are elemental rhythms most commonly found in children's rhymes, fingerplays, and simple songs and can be combined to create more complex rhythmic patterns.
Rhythmic building bricks break down composition into small, manageable units, enabling students to create their own pieces from simple patterns. This approach reduces the intimidation of composing and encourages creativity through structure. By experimenting with different combinations of rhythmic bricks, students explore concepts like repetition and arrangement, fostering creative ownership of their musical output. The use of repeated patterns helps students internalize how repetition contributes to musicality and familiarity. Additionally, rhythmic bricks allow for differentiation, as teachers can adapt pattern length, rhythmic complexity, and instrumentation to meet diverse learning needs.
Specific Learning Goals
Rhythm: Building bricks should follow natural speech (the way a word is spoken).
Repetition: Musical themes often repeat.
Form Exploration: Try various elemental forms of aabb, abab, abba, aaab, and abac.
I Get It, Now What?
Rhythmic Building Bricks/Blocks are often thematic and should always use natural speech (which is why names don't work well as there are too many accents and pickups that don't fit the elemental quarter notes and eighth notes).
Small groups of students are given 4 building bricks (this will create an 8-beat rhythm). The rhythms should be ones already learned. They practice arranging them, speaking them, adding body percussion and perhaps transferring these to non-pitched percussion. They may be used as a contrasting section to a short speech piece or song.
These candy building bricks/blocks are perfect for fall and winter holidays and include some variations including sixteenth notes! Please note this will force a copy.
Form is one of my favorite things to teach. This year I decided to teach Theme and Variations a little differently and ran across my friend Elizabeth's blog post and knew she was on to something. I loved what she had done but needed to tweak it a bit for my Orff -sensibilities and decided to add a movement component using non-locomotor and locomotor movements already learned.
I began by playing the main theme from UP and had students sing it on "la". Then we watched this video in which the theme is clearly heard and changes based on the scene shown.
I ask the students to turn and talk about the words, "mood" (which we have learned about previously), and how the mood changes affect the music.
As a class we discuss instruments, tempo, dynamics, and introduce Theme and Variations. We sang a song already learned and created four variations. We had already done some other things and this was the final activity on day one.
The next class I had this video ready. It is so perfect for older elementary. There will be one or two they probably don't know but have heard the music to before. I ask my students to wait until the countdown shows "3" before guessing the title (which they get so excited about shouting out!). It was hilarious! This is 10 minutes long, show as much or as little as you would like.
Small groups were created and each chose a theme to use - anything was up for grabs and Spongebob Squarepants, Row, Row, Row Your Boat, and several others showed up but many groups chose theme songs from the Movie Theme video. Everyone in the group had to agree on the theme song.
Groups were then tasked with creating four variations on their theme song and everyone had to sing.
Over the years I have collected many "Sing Like A ...." cards similar to the ones here (free pdf). I gave students the option of using these and demonstrated (and reiterated) the need for the SOUND to be different each time. We also talked about changing dynamics, tempo, etc.
Groups decided on variations and wrote them on individual white boards, then practiced these. We also added a movement component where the movement should reflect the mood of the variation.
Students decided order of performance and everyone watching responded with two thumbs up (they heard four different variations), or one thumb up (they heard some variations). It was so much fun and they were incredibly engaged and everyone was singing! Music to my ears!
Hope you give it a try and let me know how it went!
This is the final installment of "Musical Vacations" to finish out the school year.
I just finished an Immigration Celebration unit with my second graders and do another unit on music around the world with my fourth grade students earlier in the school year. With my second graders, who are oh so wiggly and squiggly, this has been the perfect unit to complete our time together! I would highly recommend having a globe handy or projecting a world map to show the children where all these songs come from.
1. Rattlin' Bog - Ireland
My students learn this in March for St. Patrick's Day and they love it. They choose or create rhythms to play on drums, bodhran style, during the chorus. Of course we add motions to each of the cumulative verses!
2. Yesh Lanu Tayish - Israel
Another favorite shared by a fellow music teacher who has a heart for songs from other cultures! Thanks, Marilyn!
3. Cuddly Koala - Australia
This is from my book, "Hands to Hands", available here. This one was sent by a lovely Australian friend, Susan!
4. May There Always Be Sunshine - Russia
I am always amazed at how deeply this touches children, and this version is my favorite English version:
Others and Resources
There are several others we sing (so much music, so little time) including,
I use these cards with my fourth graders to create B sections to Halloween songs. Once small groups have created and practiced (with body percussion) four beat word chains, they transfer the body percussion to unpitched percussion. Sometimes we have even had "class challenges" where they put al the rhythms side by side and say the WHOLE thing without stopping.. very fun!
Hope you can use these!
