S13: E254 Fairy Tale Drumming and Speech Project
Who doesn’t love a great story? And even more so, who doesn’t love to use stories in the classroom to inspire new ideas. I’ve often found it challenging to find books that I love to use with my older students so I created this fairy tale project to use possibly familiar stories in a way that allows students to work together to create short speech pieces - some might even call them raps - and put together an entire classroom performance, if you desire.
You can use this project with the fairy tale stories that I’m sharing today OR use other themed literature: the little people musical artist books would work for this, Aesop’s fables, or any group of stories based on a theme. Love the project and want to use it in your classroom? Purchase this lesson here: Fairy Tales: Drumming and Speech Piece.
Process for teaching:
Class One
I begin by teaching the main part of the drum piece. We speak it, we play it and then I bring out the choose your own adventure book ‘Endlessly Ever After’ by Laurel Snyder.
Students play the drum part and I read the book until we get to the place where there are two options to choose from. I select one student to decide where our adventure goes and as I flip the pages to that choice, the students play the drum part again. Somewhat of an AB form (drum book drum book) or Rondo form (since the part being spoken changes each time).
Class Two
In the second lesson, I review the drum part and we add the repeating low drum ostinato. Instead of reading the choose your own adventure book, I invite students to take turns reading the story of Snow White. We read the story together, but don’t play the drums during this time.
I ask students to share the characters from the story and we make a list on the board.
Then I ask students to share some of the things that occur in the plot of the story. And write those down on the board.
I then guide them towards creating either short 4-beat phrases that rhyme in couplets OR longer 8-beat phrases that rhyme in couplets. This can go a few different ways. I usually ask students to raise their hand and share something that happened in the story or information about a character. Sometimes students share a complete phrase or say something that I will then use to create a phrase that fits within 4 or 8 beats.
Then I ask students to think of something that relates to that phrase and rhyme with the last word.
We do this process a second time so that we have four phrases.
Then we put the drum portion together with the speech portion. I begin by having the low drum start and adding the A section “once upon a time…” We play it once or twice together, then stop drumming and speak/rap our phrase once through. Then perform the drumming part a second time.
Class Three
We review the drum parts and the poem we created in the last class.
I put students into small groups. Each group is given a different story. There is a worksheet I use so that students can write down information that’s relevant to the story that will help them create their phrases. I walk around to each group to help them, if needed.
Once they’ve created their phrases, we head back to the drums and each group shares their creations. We all drum - then one group shares - we drum again - the second group shares.
Class Four
If you want to continue with this project, students can add an element of choreography or create a body percussion or ostinato pattern to accompany their story.
Use this in a performance or just for fun in class!
You don’t have to follow this format in terms of what you do in each class. This is just one option for how it could be done.