Rainbow Rhythms

Goal: Students will experience ‘tika-ti’ (16th and eighth compound) rhythm values through chants and classroom percussion. Students will work as a team to create their own rainbow rhythm arrangements.

Suggested Execution:

Day 1:

Learn: Teacher “Does anyone know what ROY G BIV stands for?” Work with the class to name all of the colors of the rainbow. Teacher “Did you know that rainbows have their very own rhythms?” T then demonstrates the chant.

Teacher Talk: at this stage it would be best to have class sit in a circle.

Students will then learn chant through echo. Next Teacher will practice chant while keeping a beat on a djembe or other available class percussion. Once Students get the hang of it, switch to drumming the actual rhythm of the chant on your instrument and challenge Students to drum along on there knees. As the class continues, walk around the circle with the drum giving students a chance to play the pattern on the actual drum. (Just once per student so as to not take too long.) That’s it for day one.

Day 2:

Percussion Ensemble: Re-visit “Roy G. Biv’s Wonderful Rainbow Beat” and chant with class to refresh memory. Next, break class up into 3 groups: 1) quarter notes [ta], 2) eighth notes [ti-ti], 3) 16th-8th compound [tika-ti]. Each group will have its own set of classroom percussion.

Teacher Talk: just pick whatever instruments best fit the type of rhythm.

The way this breaks down is Group 1 will only play on ‘red,’ ‘green’ and ‘blue,’ Group 2 will only play on ‘orange’ and ‘yellow,’ and Group 3 will only play on ‘indigo’ and ‘violet’.

Perform: Next is performance time! As a class, perform the beat/chant with percussion instruments. Play a few times and the have each group rotate to the next station. The goal is for all students to experience all parts.

Day 3:

Create: Today Students will create their own Rainbow Rhythm using only ROY G BIV as their building blocks. Break class up into groups of 3-4 students and challenge them to create their own unique Rainbow Rhythm creation. Length is limited to 2-4 measures and they can use as many rests as they want. The one catch is they have to include ‘indigo’ or ‘violet’ at least once.

With their Rainbow Rhythms created, students can now use any available classroom percussion to create their own performance. Goal, to perform their chant 4 times with percussion.

Perform: Next is performance time! Be sure to leave enough time so each group gets a change to perform. (Bonus Fun: Give each team a chance to come up with a science themed team name!)

Day 4 (or end of Day 3):

Analyze: Briefly re-visit “Roy G. Biv’s Wonderful Rainbow Beat” and break down the actual rhythms in the pattern. If ‘tika-ti' is new, then this is an opportunity to introduce it to the class. This could then be a jumping off point to pivot into another related lesson.

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