Simpedia

Laurie Richards, Nebraska

1) Create some laminated practice pads to use dry-erase markers on. Call out major chords and have students draw and connect the dots on the practice pad.

2) Have chord races (may not want to if you have a very sensitive student, or one you know will not fare well) – have 2 or 3 students at the keyboard, call out a chord, see who finds it correctly first. I have a rule of only playing ONE chord and holding it, so they don’t just play something as fast as they can (chaos!).

3) If they are past learning the 12 major chords, hand out sheets with triangles on them. Call out a chord and have them ‘notate’ it and label that chord on a triangle.

4) Use a ‘spin the wheel’ app (Decide Now is one) and create a wheel with all the chords they’ve learned. Spin the wheel, play the chord.

5) Check with Jennifer Lee to see if she is still selling Buggzart cards (used to be available thru SM but not currently). Kids LOVE these cards and beg me to use them to run through chords.

Anne Smith, Nebraska

I had some old Scrabble tiles. I pulled out three sets of A through G and stained over the point values. I added sharps and flats with a white pen to two sets. So that’s all the notes, put in one bag.

Then I made another set with all the different chord types. That’s a second bag.

I have them pull one tile out of each bag and play that chord, i.e. D# from the first bag and aug from the second. Play a D#aug chord.

I also use just the A through G chords to review after we’ve learned those chords.