Acka Backa

In recent years, this singing game has become an all-time favorite of my students.  They ask to sing and play it ALL the time.  The game comes from this book:

It's published by the National Youth Choir of Scotland.  There's also a version of the book for younger students and a version with singing games for older students.  I am the proud owner of all three books.  They are GEMS!  While they contain a lot of the singing material I already own, they have different activities for them and the kids eat them up.  They are WELL worth you money!

Here's the song:

And here's the game from the Singing Games book:

Game 1:

In a standing circle, the class sings the song while passing a playground ball to the beat.  The student that gets the ball on the word “you” is out and sits down where they are.  Play continues until on student is left.  ** Note, students sit down in their spot which means as students are eliminated they must toss the ball over the seated students heads.  In order for this to be successful you must carefully and proactively prepare your students for this activity.  It’s tricky, but they LOVE it!!!

And here's another way to play it:

Game 2::

In a seated circle, class sings song while teacher walks around inside of circle pointing to one student per beat.  The student pointed to on the word “you” moves to an instrument to play the chord bordon.  Game repeats, and next student chosen moves to the first instrument as the first student rotates to a new instrument.

Here's a PowerPoint that I created to prepare and practice the rhythmic and melodic concepts of the song.  If you haven't noticed (and I think I've said this before) I structure my PowerPoints the same each time.  Generally, rhythm is first (not always the case, my sequence dictates this, but generally the rhythm is accessible) then melody.  But before these are the title, lyric and beat slides.

Title slide:

 Lyric slide:

 Beat slide:

 Rhythmic preparation slide:

 Ta & ti-ti practice slide, rest preparation slide:

 Full rhythm practice slide (stick only, this is also written out in stick notation with note heads):

Then, there are the melodic slides.  These samples of the preparation slides for do:

 Visual representation of iconic notation with text:

 Iconic notation with solfa:

 Iconic notation on the staff with text:

 Iconic notation on the staff with solfa:

 These next two slides highlight the critical attribute of do: it's lower than la, so & mi and it's a skip below mi.

 Then, all of the preparation slides are gone through AGAIN but this time do is labeled:

 And then we move from iconic to symbolic representation (or as the students call it, the "real" notes):

 And then onto absolute pitch names (I generally start teaching these in third grade and I start with mi-re-do on B-A-G):

This PowerPoint can be found in PDF form on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  

I hope you all have a GREAT week!