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When do we get to go to gym?
If I had a dollar for every time I heard that question, I’d pack up my cash, grab my beach hat, and retire just so I’d never have to hear it again.
But I get it. We have students that genuinely love music class. But then there’s this posse of (mostly) boys that are convinced that you have to like either Music or Phy. Ed. and they are not afraid to tell you that they pick Phy. Ed.
As music teachers, we know that music and physical education are not mutually exclusive. But our students might not know this. Especially when their families have them joining traveling hockey teams at like, age 3. So how do we open the minds of our competitive, Phy. Ed.-loving students?
Enter: Football Fridays.
In the fall, we start every Friday the same way.
School Song
National Anthem
Victory Dance Brain Break
Why teach your school song?
Build school pride
Talk about connections between music/other events
Get to know your students. You’ll hear things like… “My brother is playing in the game tonight!” or “I heard this song at a volleyball game, too!”
I find there is a natural segue into the national anthem after talking about the school song. “You know how we sing our school song to pump up our team and unite our community? That’s what our national anthem does for our country!”
The United States’ national anthem is a difficult song to sing. The range is tricky and some of the words are difficult, but I teach k-4 and do “football Fridays” with every grade level. In upper elementary classes I show the lyrics and play a karaoke track of the song. I do the same with my littles, but I focus on how we act/stand, etc. during the song. Ex. Not a good time to get up to go buy popcorn ;)
For the “high concentration” portion of Football Fridays, we often choose an activity from Music a la Abbott's (Amy Abbott) Football bundle.
If you're not ready to commit to a purchase but would like a themed solfege activity,
try these FREE Football-themed Tone Ladders:
Here are some of the “victory dance” videos I’ve used in my classroom that the students LOVE!
To add to their engagement, we actually created our own football celebration dances with a green screen and WeVideo, a video editing platform.
Here is a sample:
Interested in creating your own videos with WeVideo?
Try it for free here: wevideo.pxf.io/LPNqv0
Hope this post inspires you to try out "football fridays" in your own class! Let me know if you have any other ideas that help engage all of your students! Or if you have any questions about making your own videos-- it's become a passion of mine!?
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