Weevily Wheat
Process:
Sing song a few times until the students are able to join in.  The B section is a multiplication section that starts with 5x5.
 Words:
Don't want no weevily wheat
Don't want no barley
Take some flour, in half an hour
And bake a cake for Charlie.

B section
5 x 5 is 25
5 x 6 is 30
5 x 7 is 35
5 x 8 is 40

Ask for suggestions for other multiplication tables.
.  Many of my students have no concept about how wheat is made into flour and what type of food you can make/bake with flour.  They usually come up with fried chicken and then are stumped until I show them a photo of some baked goods.  They also have never heard of a weevil, so I show them photos of wheat, wheat germ, sprouted wheat and flour. I also show them a weevil.  It's a nasty looking critter.

On with the process:
1. Clap on the syncopa don't want.  The students will likely keep clapping the pattern they think will follow so I stand with my hands behind my back until they get it correctly.
2.  Add patting too the rhythm of weevily wheat
3.  Add  chest pound on barley and Charlie
4.  Add a jump on flour and cake
5.  Once they have learned the song with movements, audiate and do only movments
6. transfer to either non-pitched percussion or orff instruments.
7.  Ask students to decide which instrumental timbre will fit for each body percussion/movement

This activity worked nicely in a circle.  I put out four instruments and they rotated the circle on the B section.
 I've done this lesson with grades 3-5
Another lesson plan format for Weevily Wheat

Weevily Wheat Lesson Plan format 2

Tideo
process:
Students enter room in a circle.
  I ask them to identify the mi-re-do in the song by holding up their hands.
After they correctly identify and isolate the mi-red- I sing the song a few times and have them join in by singing mi-re-do.
After a few more times singing the song, the students will be ready to join in with the rest of the song and then I demonstrate passing by windows.
After several demonstrations I invite a few more students into the circle and until I have formed a double circle.
Here's where I modify the dance a bit.  My students hate holding hands, especially if it's two boys and with many of my lower academic classes, the boys outnumber the girls by a large number.  My students can handle holding hands in a moving circle, but if there are multiple partners I can guarantee that there will be some disruptive behavior when partner A doesn't like partner B.  It's not worth the hassle so I modified the partner turns on the B Section to be a partner hand clapping that echos the rhythm (clap your own hands twice and then your partner's once.  On the jingle at the window, they pat the sixteenth notes and two eighth notes, followed by the same hand clapping pattern.  I learned the hard way not to bother with the partner turns.  It was much more successful with the hand clapping/patting and that also transitioned nicely into a rhythm decoding activity I did with colored popsicle sticks.

After the dance and rhythm decoding I played a game with a sign that I made that has MUTE, BEAT, WORDS, and SOLFEGE.  It's similar to the radio game where you turn the sound on and off--this just adds other components.  It's a great way to reinforce the difference between beat and rhythm and solfege from rhythm syllables.


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