Teaching Tempo Terms with Songs

Several years ago, I posted some free printables and songs that I use to really help my students remember their tempo terms. Today, I revisited that tempo terms post to prepare for our group lesson on sightreading tips and added one more Lento tempo term poster to the mix. 

Sometimes it's so tempting to jump into new music at a fast pace, but practicing at the speed of no mistakes is super important so that muscle memory is paved in your brain with correct notes instead of errors. 

I am super excited to be attending the Vibrant Music Teacher Turboboost online music teacher conference next week. The prep materials I've been browsing inspired me to pair a quick movement activity with this Lento song. 

One of the topics that really captured my attention on the Teacher Turboboost schedule was the session by Carmen Carpenter titled "Movement Magic."  I've already enjoyed browsing some of the articles she suggests about how movement boosts learning. I definitely use a lot of movement activities with the young piano students in my studio and agree that it helps them to focus and retain more. 

Tempo Music with Movement

Today at group lessons for my beginner class, I inserted music and movement tempo songs between different sections of our sit-down landmark staff coloring activity to keep them engaged. It helped them to stay attentive when we took a quick break from coloring landmark staff notes and "Jibbity-FACE" patterns and stood up to make ghost-like "lento" motions while singing the Lento lyrics above.  

But their favorite was definitely running allegro to the giant music staff to choose a stuffed animal for the grand staff toss. They practiced target shooting by tossing Beanie Babies at different landmark notes on the staff instead of "javelin straws" which I had used in the past. 

You can view my earlier post to see more tempo songs like this. I also include many movement and music activities that correlate with specific method book songs in my free online lesson book plans that my students use each week during private music lessons and piano lab.