Children who are music-savvy love to listen and make music. Children who are beautiful in nature can perceive and observe well. They are good at telling what they see, hear, taste and smell. Below a number of didactic structures are described with which each lesson can be turned into a motivating and meaningful lesson with a view to the intelligence ‘music handsome and natural beauty’.
Didactic structures – Muziekknap
Background music
Different types of music can be used to relax the children, to start a lesson or part of a day, to liven up a work, to create a mood and of course to give children energy.
Apprenticeships
During learning songs, children are engaged in writing or performing songs based on the subject matter. A lot of material is left behind with the help of all kinds of music, from biology raps to spelling rock. An effective technique for teaching children to write their own learning song is to have them brain storm first about ideas, phrases and words and then put the sentences into a popular tune.
Song for two voices
The children form a pair to sing a song together. Some lines are indicated with A, others with B and others with AB. A song for two voices can also be sung with the whole class. Half of the class sings the A rules, the other half the B rules and the whole class sings the AB rules.
Team cry
Children work in small groups to make a team cry on a particular topic. First, the children come up with words and sentences related to the subject matter. Then they invent a rhythm, emphasizing the important words or phrases. Movements can be used in a team cry to also stimulate the intelligence of movement handsome.
Didactic structures – Natuurknap
Classify
The children or the teacher can come up with their own classification and / or the objects to be classified. The children are given the objects and a number of characteristics or a graphic scheme such as a 2×2 matrix. Children work alone or in small groups to classify the objects.
What you can also do as a teacher is let the children choose themselves when they are going to divide them into categories and choose their own classification system.
Classification works well with animals, plants, rocks, clouds, food. But other things can also be subdivided into categories: word lists, pictures, shapes, numbers, issues, actions, music, cars.
Watch-Write-Conversation
Each group receives an object, such as a flower, toothbrush or kitchen utensils. The children are given two minutes to look at the object. The goal is to capture every detail in their memory. Then the object is removed. The children make the best possible description of the object from their memory. Finally, they use the descriptions as a basis for a discussion of the object’s characteristics. After the conversation, the children can look at the object again to see how accurate they were or what they missed.
Look-Draw-Two-Talk
Children view an object, such as a leaf under a magnifying glass, a cell under a microscope or a worm with the naked eye. While studying the object, the children draw it. Then two children who have studied and drawn the same object come together. They take turns mentioning properties of the object. Pairs can compare their observations with another pair.
Look-Write-Two-Talk
Children independently study objects and write down their findings. For example, the children all go to the schoolyard to observe the behavior of ants. When the children come back to class, they use this information to write a detailed description. Children form groups of two and discuss their observations.
Equal / Unequal
Each pair is given two items that are similar in some ways and different in others. Examples: moth and a butterfly, a rose and a daisy, an oak leaf and a plane tree leaf. The children sit so that they cannot see each other’s object. The children work together to describe and note all the similarities and differences between the two objects. When the children are done, they compare their objects to see what other similarities and differences they can find. Equal / Unequal can also be used well in other areas. Children discover similarities and differences in descriptions, news reports about the same event, illustrations or paintings with the same subject, pairs of pictures with missing or changed elements, or historical persons.
For more didactic structures with other intelligences, read my articles:
- Didactic structures – picture handsome and moving handsome
- Didactic structures – smart thinking and word smart
- Didactic structures – smart and self-smart
