Rhythm, Pulse and Reading Notation | Year 7 Music PowerPoint Lesson

This lesson separates pulse from rhythm - the distinction Year 7 most often gets wrong - and then builds note values from semibreve down to semiquaver, time signatures, rests, dots and ties. It is a ready-to-teach PowerPoint scaffold for an hour-long lesson on rhythm and notation. Pupils learn a consistent counting system for quavers and semiquavers, meet ostinato, syncopation, call and response and polyrhythm as named devices, and work through a method for identifying a time signature by ear. Two interactive tasks are included: performing four written rhythms against a steady pulse, and composing two bars that add up correctly.