A post by Janice on Music Lesson Plans: A Game to help with Teaching Major Scales

If you’ve ever taught music theory, then you would know that it can be difficult to get students to remember the pattern of tones and semitones needed, the scale degree names and for younger students the solfege names in order.

A few years ago when we were working in our music school, my husband and I came up with a concept of teaching scales like building a ladder. As a simple explanation, we used to say was “you start on any note and go up step by step until you reach the top” , but as music teachers we know the trick to it is making sure the pattern of notes are correct on the way.

This is when we devised this short game called “Scale Ladders” which you can find as part of a complete set of twenty games from our Printable Music Games package. You can adapt this game for very young children and use a solfege version with them or you could use it for paired or small group work with older students to help them retain the order of tones and semitones or scale degree names. There are three different versions of the game to choose from. We’ve successfully used this game for children as young as 4 and as old as Junior High School level before.

Here is a screen shot to show how effectively the game instructions and printing resources are displayed on the website:

ScaleLaddersWebsiteScreenCapture

To find our more about the Scale Ladders Game and the Printable Music Games Package, you can find more ideas and information at the Printable Music Games website.

Printable Music Games