Three Ways to Teach with Melodic Contouring

One of my favorite music teaching tools is melodic contouring.  This is basically a line depicting the sequence of pitches in a melody.  You can figure out the basic shape by playing dot-to-dot with the notes.  So, for example, "Jingle Bells" would look something like this:

When working with melodic contouring in one of my activities, I find that it can be helpful to exaggerate the movement of the notes (I'll include activity sheets at the end of the post).  So again, "Jingle Bells" ends up looking something like this:

How can you use melodic contouring?  Here are a few ideas:

1. Use it to introduce music-reading.  To someone who doesn't know how to read music notes, it can be intimidating to look at a piece of sheet music.  But if a person can hear the difference between notes going up and notes going down, then he or she can understand melodic contouring.  I find that both adults and children grasp the idea of melodic contouring fairly quickly and it serves to acclimate the student to music-reading without a complete knowledge of note names, chord structures, etc.
2. Use it to teach tricky or unfamiliar melodies.  I've taught both individuals and groups unfamiliar melodies with melodic contouring.  Children especially seem to enjoy the visualization of these melodies and it often helps to speed up the learning and/or memorizing process.  Isolating tricky passages in a song and using something like my activity sheets to convert them into melodic contours is fun and appeals to visual learners.  You can add a kinesthetic dimension by asking students trace the melodic contour with a finger or hand as they sing.  Sometimes I do this with activity sheets, and sometimes I use a white board with printouts of my various characters.
3. Use it for a warm-up or vocal exploration.  Rather than depicting an existing melody, allow students draw any melodic line they want on the activity sheet.  Then, have students use the melodic contour to direct the pitches of their swoops and sighs as they warm up.  I find that this really gets children engaged in the warm-up.  After all, they want to hear how their warm up is going to sound!  Another variation would be for you to pre-draw the vocalizes that you want them to practice.  It might turn out something like this:

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I like teaching with melodic contouring because it's fun, versatile and takes little to no preparation.  You can print out these activity sheets, or simple draw a line on a white board (also included in the printable are some large versions of the Bunny-carrot, Letter-mailbox, Bee-flower etc. illustrations that you could use on the white board if you want).  Easy peasy!  Hope you enjoy!