Review · 20 minutes · Free to use and copy

Tempo Terms

Students who have met the tempo terms before can still attach a speed to each one, and the ones holding them as vocabulary rather than as tempo are found by an aural item rather than by a definition.

First teach — The full period, for a room meeting this topic for the first time.

Read the lesson this plan teaches →

Before the bell

Assumes students can already: Students have met the terms at least once and can read a metronome number. This repairs a list that has become words on a page.

Tempo Ladder on the projector
One passage the room can already play

The period

5 minIndependent baseline probe

Name it by ear, not by list

Play the same passage at three tempos without naming any of them and ask for the term each time. No poster, no list. A student who can recite the order slowest to fastest and cannot do this has the vocabulary and not the tempo, and that gap is invisible on every written quiz.

Tempo Ladder
4 minDiagnose the barrier

A term is a speed, not a word

Set the ladder to a number and let them feel it before you say the term. Then the reverse. Two minutes of this beats ten of definitions, because the room already has the definitions and that is precisely the problem.

Tempo Ladder
7 minTargeted instructional re-entry

Rit. and accel., or the middle of the range

The group that named them by ear gets rit. and accel. against a moving passage — direction of change, which is the harder claim. The group that could not gets three fixed tempos, repeated, until Andante and Allegro are speeds they recognize rather than positions in a list. No app drills this topic, so the ladder is the only tool and it works for both groups.

Tempo Ladder
4 minImmediate evidence and next move

Two excerpts, on the roster

Two short excerpts played once each. Students write rit. or accel. for each and hand it in. Nothing on paper about definitions — the objective was never about the words, and the excerpts are the only part of this that could not be answered by memorizing the poster.

How you will know

Evidence: Two aural passes twenty minutes apart: three tempos named at the start, and two rit./accel. excerpts at the end, both recorded on the roster.

What the current evidence supports

Both exit excerpts correct. One right and one wrong is a coin flip and reads as unassessed rather than half-knowing.
The three opening tempos named within one term of correct. Ranges overlap and a defensible neighbor is a pass.
A student who was accurate at the start and at the end did not need this period, which is worth knowing before you plan the next one.

Why this measures the objective: Both halves are heard rather than written, and that is the whole design. This topic's failure mode is a student who can order the terms perfectly on paper and cannot recognize one in the room, so any written instrument would confirm the knowledge that is not in question.

Boundary: Evidence collected in this period describes immediate performance under the stated conditions. It does not establish durable retention or broad mastery.

Check later

Delayed check: In a later rehearsal, use a new example before prompting. The same-period comparison records immediate change only; record whether the target is available later with reduced support.

Reaching everybody

If they are not there yet

Exaggerate the change on the excerpts. A subtle rit. tests hearing acuity; an obvious one tests whether they know which word means which direction.
Give two terms to choose between rather than an open answer.

If they are ready for a changed condition

Ask for the metronome number as well as the term, and let them defend it.
Two terms that could describe the same tempo, and what else would decide between them. The answer is character, and it is where the number line runs out.

Getting at the work

A student who is hard of hearing can watch the ladder's visual beat — the claim is about detecting a change in rate, which is visible.
Spoken answers are fine. Nothing here needs to be written.

If the room is not ready: If the room names all three opening tempos by ear, the terms have landed and this review is spent. Rolls & Marks is the better use of the remaining fifteen minutes and has no drill to fall back on either.

How this supports the standards

MU:Re7.2.6a: Describe how the elements of music and expressive qualities relate to the structure of the pieces.; In this period: Both blocks that carry evidence are aural: students relate a change in speed to what they heard rather than to a definition they memorized.

National Core Arts Standards, 2014 — Music, PK-8 General Music strand, published by NAfME. Text quoted verbatim. https://nafme.org/resource/2014-music-standards-pk-8-general-music/

What to look for

Reciting the order while failing the aural item is the exact profile this period exists to find, and it survives every written quiz you could set.
Mood words instead of speed words — “happy” for Allegro — mean the term is attached to a character rather than a tempo. Common, and worth naming out loud.
No app grades this. The roster line you write during the first block is half the evidence and cannot be reconstructed later.