MANCHESTER COLLEGE Department of Education Lesson by: Kaitlin Hughes

Lesson: Pentatonic Scale Approx. Length: 30 minutes Age or Grade: K-5 This lesson can be modified for each grade level, allowing each class to watch the video and reflect on it. The higher levels will get a chance to play more instruments and think more critically about the lesson whereas the younger grades will be merely introduced to concepts. (Lesson borrowed from: http://cnx.org/content/m11873/latest/)

Academic Standards:

1 – Singing alone and with others

2 – Playing an instrument alone and with others

3 - Reading, notating, and interpreting music

6 - Listening, analyzing, and describing music

8 – Understanding music in relation to history and culture

Soc. Studies 1 - Culture

Advanced Preparation by Teacher:

1.) Have YouTube video ready to play for the students right away. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk

2.) Have China pictures up and ready to show. 3.) Have a pentagon drawn on the board. 4.) Have a pentatonic wood block ready along with maracas, chimes, and glockenspiels and

xylophones for various grades. 5.) Have students pick up books when they come into class.

Performance Objectives:

Given listening examples of music, the students will orally identify them as either "major" or "pentatonic" scales.

The class will discuss the geographical/cultural aspects of the two types of scales and discuss the differences in their sounds.

Given musical instruments, the students will be able to visually see the difference in scales and play them after instruction.

Procedure:

1. Introduce a quick Daily Oral Music on the overhead. Have them echo you in singing do, re, mi, sol, la (purposely skipping the fa in order to tie it into the lesson).

2. Show video and ask the students to watch and follow along with him. “Pretend like we are his audience in the video”. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk)   Then explain to the class that he was showing a simple five tone scale or a pentatonic scale. Explain that a scale is like a list of the notes that you will find in a piece of music. Ask the students, “Listen to this, and afterwards tell me what country you think it comes from.” Play a song composed with a pentatonic scale. For example: Korean folk songs "Arirang" and "Doraji" (both found in Two Traditional Korean Songs), or of the Japanese children's songs "The Rabbit and the Turtle" and "The Moon" (both found in Japanese Music: Some Songs for Children).

3. Explain to the students: “One of the things that can make music from another culture sound different is that it may be using a different scale, or a different set of notes, to make the songs. Most of the time we hear major and minor scales in music. However, the notes he was going back and forth between were only five notes, making a pentatonic scale. Here are examples of major scale music and pentatonic scale music.” Can they tell which ones have a familiar sound and which ones sound more "exotic"? How can they tell? Most music we hear goes through the normal octave (8 notes), beginning all over after B.

4. Have the students open their books to the “piano page” and follow along as you go up and down the scale. Play through "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" (CCGGAAG FFEEDDC). This is a song played on a C Major scale.

5. Now introduce the pentatonic scale by showing China pictures on an overhead and explain a little bit about the history and what is taken in the picture. “I was able to go to China two years ago in college and experience firsthand, the different cultured music.” See pictures below.

6. Draw a pentagon on the board. Ask the class what shape this is. Count the sides with the class. (5 sides; pentagon) Ask the class, “So if a pentagon has 5 sides, how many notes do you think a pentatonic scale will have?” (5)

7. Play a pentatonic scale for them on pentatonic wood blocks (only has 5 blocks). Write the notes on the board and have them finger through it on their book piano. If the class is small enough, allow them to use instruments. Play through the 5 black keys OR play C, D, E, G, A, C.

8. If time allows or for a challenge, allow the students to make up their own pentatonic scale. Encourage them to play it for others and to listen to others.

Kindergartners – Review “Wake Me, Shake Me” and explain that this song uses a pentatonic scale because we only sing 5 notes throughout the whole song. Allow students to use maracas and work on loud and soft sounds again from previous week.

First Graders – Introduce “Wake Me, Shake Me” as a quick song with a pentatonic scale. Allow students to use maracas or on pentatonic wood blocks.

2nd and 3rd Graders – Give each student a chime that helps to make up a pentatonic scale. Take turns and have each one play one at a time. Then play a game where you point to them at various times and different speeds – they have to be ready! Reflect on the music’s sound compared to other song’s sounds.

4th and 5th Graders – Allow each student to be able to play a pentatonic scale and song on a glockenspiel or xylophone. Be sure to write the notes up on the board so they can visually see it the whole time and allow them to play the song and then experiment within the pentatonic scale.

• Pentatonic Scale Definition (from Wikipedia): A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave in contrast to a heptatonic (seven note) scale such as the major scale. Pentatonic scales are very common and are found all over the world, including Celtic folk music, Hungarian folk music, West African music, African-American spirituals, American folk music, Jazz, American blues music and rock music, Sami joik singing, children's songs, the music of ancient Greece[2][3] and the Greek traditional music and songs from Epirus, Northwest Greece and the music of Southern Albania, the tuning of the Ethiopian krar and the Indonesian gamelan, Philippine Kulintang, melodies of Korea, Malaysia, Japan, China, India and Vietnam (including the folk music of these countries), the Andean music, the Afro-Caribbean tradition, Polish highlanders from the Tatra Mountains, and Western Classical composers such as French composer Claude Debussy. The pentatonic scale is also used on the Great Highland Bagpipe.