Time Signature

The bane of my existence (next to syncopation) is when I have to teach time signature to my students.

I was a product of music educators that told me that when I saw a symbol that it meant "______________" and I assumed they were correct and did not question them further

Teaching ELL students and students who are in general more analytical, this simple task of just hoping that they will think about time signature as simply as I did is wishful thinking. They use their funds of knowledge more than they even know and end up over-thinking this all the time.

When I had to stop and think about what a time signature was all about, my right brain decided that I couldn't just break it down as precisely as it was and leave it at that.  Since I am making a more conscious effort to promote more right brain thinking in my students, I gave them a visual to help offset their tendencies to over-think.

You can purchase this PowerPoint at my TpT Store.  Later on I will add another PowerPoint that helps with the bottom number of the time signature which is much more complicated for my students to figure out.

In third grade the state standard pertaining to time signature states that students should be able to "Explain the function of the top number of a time signature involving two, three, and four beats." and then the bottom number is added for fourth grade

I animate my powerpoints so some of the images look a little weird or make absolutely no sense.

Since I have just finished teaching my students steady beat, and they will start to read written music, start by having them realize that the beats need to be organized (I've always pictured beats and bouncy balls that will go wherever they want)

I call a measure a box, and the box only fits so much inside of it.  But we do not know how many beats can fit unless we have a helper:  time signature.

I love my animation on this slide, each dot will move itself into the measure!  The reason I use a quarter note instead of the common 4 in the bottom position is because it does not look like a fraction so my students do not think of a time signature as a fraction (which a lot of times ends up happening).  I have also seen this time signature format used in some recorder and elementary method books and when it comes time to change over to having a number in the bottom I can simply tell students that it means the same as the time signature they were seeing before

I then walk my students through how to figure out the time signature of a rhythm (the time signature appears at the end).  

• First I have the students say and clap the rhythm
• Second, I have them say the rhythm and tap the steady beat on their laps (this took about 5 tries for all of my students to get the hang of this)
• I then ask how many times they tapped their laps when they read their rhythm (they show me the number on their fingers)
• Then my students tell me the number of beats in the measure and I confirm if they answer correctly.

The amount of "ah-ha" moments that they all had all at once was awesome !

There are several slides following that allow the students to practice figuring out the time signature and then as an extension (especially for my 4th graders), I give them correct and incorrect measures and using the step-by-step process we used earlier, they can tell me if the measure is correct or incorrect.  If it is incorrect, I ask them to offer a solution as to how the measure can be corrected to match the time signature.