Solo and group tasks
Solo tasks
Solo tasks are designed for a student to work on the concept of duration on their own (at home or individually).
Task 1 - Groove Pizza
Experiment with duration and rhythms online using Groove Pizza.
Task 2 - Junk drum kit
Set up a junk-drum-kit using saucepan lids, books, chair legs, buckets and empty plastic bottles.
Try creating some groovy rhythms using pencils or chopsticks instead of drumsticks.
Record some of your rhythmic creations to share with your teacher.
Try drumming along with songs you know well.
Task 3 - Rhythm trees
Do a Google search for 'rhythm tree images'.
Invent your own way to draw a rhythm tree.
Task 4 - Rhythm chunks
Many rhythms can be broken into chunks of 2 and 3.
There are 2 quaver subdivisions in a crotchet (one beat note) and 3 quaver subdivisions in a dotted crotchet (one and a half beat note).
Flip a coin 10 times to create a random rhythm using crotchets and dotted crotchets.
Each time you flip the coin to heads, write a crotchet.
Each time you flip the coin to tails, write a dotted crotchet.
Clap the resulting rhythm.
For each crotchet, think '1, 2'.
For each dotted crotchet, think '1, 2, 3'.
Group tasks
Group tasks allow groups of students to further their understanding of duration.
Task 1 - Drawing rhythms
Invent your own way to draw rhythms, including longer and shorter notes.
Draw a few bars of rhythm and teach someone how to interpret your symbols.
Task 2 - Create a rhythm canon
The leader claps a 4 beat rhythm.
Everyone else echoes the rhythm.
While clapping the echo, the leader is already clapping the next 4 beat rhythm.