Transition Songs for F-2
Songs have been used to educate, soothe and organise students for longer than the written word! This resource presents a series of fourteen short useful songs that can be integrated regularly to create a calm, unified and orderly classroom. Many of the songs are based on the melodies of existing children's song to make them easy to learn and teach.
Each song is presented with lyrics, backing tracks and activity guides with ideas about how to introduce each song and its related concepts. There are also ukulele chords for many songs as an optional extension for interested educators.
Resource Guide
The Resource Guide below includes ideas and background information to support Junior Primary teachers to introduce fourteen transition songs.
Audio Tracks
All of the songs associated with this course are also located on the teach page
Teaching Songs to F-2
Songs are a great tool to support students' emotional, social, physical and cognitive development. Young students learn best when songs are taught in smaller, achievable chunks.
Explore
Song repetition is key but the same song can be sung a hundred different ways. Check out the variaions ideas below.
Start by singing the whole song to the group.
Teach students a line at a time using an echo pattern.
Use a call and response pattern. For example, the teacher calls "rain, rain, go away" and the students respond "come again another day".
Go around a circle and have each student sing two words or a line from the song. For example, student A sings "rain rain",student B sings "go away." This can be directed by pointing at students or by pointing at lyrics written on the board. This will reveal who knows the song and who is still learning it.
Encourage students to practice singing the song in their head. This can be developed by having a group alternate between singing out loud and singing in their heads. This challenge will take lots of concentration but will help students to internalise timing, pitch and words.
Have students explore one musical component like humming the melody or clapping the rhythm.
Integrate actions, and include the students ideas.
Vary how the song is sung i.e whisper words or do a spooky version.
Break the song into smaller phrases and slow down the tempo, it may take several sessions to teach one song.
Young students will match your enthusiasm, so bring it!
Individual students may need additional support to engage with a song. Giving students props or shakers to use, or having them in close proximity can help support their focus.
Embed
Songs can be incorporated across the curriculum. Songs have been used to teach language and culture longer than the written word. Songs can welcome students into the classroom, support their pack-up process, remind them to wash their hands or prepare them for a new learning area. Specific learning concepts can also be consolidated through song. For example, a call and response maths song can be used to practice computation or to teach students the months of the year.
Sing early, sing often. A repeating melody can be comforting to young students. Consider repeating songs at the same time or during the same activity each day.
Find out what songs families sing and incorporate recorded or live versions of these.
Make up a new nonsense songs each day.
Content Authors
Erin Mcintosh
Erin McIntosh is a Song Room Teaching Artist, music mentor and singer songwriter, that has completed her Bachelor of Music and is in the midst of finishing her Master of Primary Teaching degree. Erin has worked amongst playgroups for four years and primary schools for the last three years.
Cath Rutten
Cath Rutten has a Bachelor of Performing Arts, a Graduate Diploma in Arts Management and a Master of Arts and Community Practise from VCA University of Melbourne. She is a musician, singer, actor, juggler and above all a collaborator. She currently works as a Song Room Teaching Artist, mentor, choir and uke group leader and she performs and tours nationally and internationally as part of the ABC's Dirt Girl program. She has previously worked as a community development worker in Asia and the Pacific and more generally collaborated with a diverse range of schools and communities. She is interested in the intersection of arts and health because she believes that human beings are innately artistic and that music and art are vital to living well!
Australian Curriculum Links
Students develop aural skills by exploring and imitating sounds, pitch and rhythm patterns using voice, movement and body percussion (ACAMUM080).
Sing and play instruments to improvise, practise a repertoire of chants, songs and rhymes, including songs used by cultural groups in the community (ACAMUM081).
Listen to, recite and perform poems, chants, rhymes and songs, imitating and inventing sound patterns including alliteration and rhyme (ACELT1585).
This resource has been produced by The Song Room with the support of the Ian Potter Foundation.
Thanks to Cath Rutten, Erin Macintosh and Sheldon King for devising, singing and recording the songs.
Learning content in this resource has also be adapted from The Song Room's 'Music Made for You' Song Room publication written by Kate Page.