ti-ti (head); 
tah (shoulders);
ta-ah (swing hips from side to side, or move the stomach
out and in); 
ta-ah-ah-ah (head-shoulders-hips-knees).
This really loosens up the students.
REINFORCEMENT
After students start playing pieces that contain eighth notes, reinforcement begins. Some activities I have found successful are:
Games
1. Playing "telephone." Students form a line or a circle. One student (or the teacher) taps a rhythm figure on the back of the next student. After this rhythm has gone the complete round of students, I check to see if it has remained the same. When starting out with this game, I have a rhythmically-secure student at the beginning. The "weak-links" will break the chain, but this activity motivates them to be more careful. They learn and improve their sense of rhythm through repetitions of this exercise, each one taking a turn at being the leader, and they have fun doing it.
2. Responding to flash cards with whole-body
movements. At the beginning I use
only quarter, eighth, and half notes. I use movements similar to those which
Karen Zorn demonstrated at a piano workshop at Goshen College one summer:
ti-ti (head); tah (shoulders);
ta-ah (swing hips from side to side, or move the stomach
out and in); ta-ah-ah-ah (head-shoulders-hips-knees).
This really loosens up the students.
3. "Where's the Rhythm Pattern?" Several rhythm examples are written on the board or on flash cards. The teacher claps one pattern and a student identifies which rhythm it is. A student then takes a turn clapping and counting out loud while the others identify the example played. Later, students can take turns playing one of the patterns on a drum, with no counting out loud, to see if the others can identify it.
4. Dictation: Begin with a "skeleton" of quarter notes written out, then play a rhythm example and have the students connect the stems on the beats which contain eighths:
becomes
For more experienced students, set the metronome,
count off the beats, and play a short rhythm example three times and ask
them to write it down.
Show them how they can do it in shorthand: 
before adding
the note heads.
Technical Drills
Eighth notes can be incorporated very early into the student's daily and weekly practice of technical skills. As soon as students can play five-finger patterns correctly, they can do variations using eighth notes. For example, they might play something like the following examples in several different keys. The feel for eighth notes gradually becomes second nature.
WORKING WITH EIGHTH NOTES IN THE SCORE
Identifying the beat
In any given measure, it is very important that students can identify on which beat the eighth notes appear. A simple question to that effect will clarify things pretty quickly. When indicating eighth notes, my young students start by writing a vertical line for the eighth note that comes on the beat, and a horizontal dash on the second eighth note, the one that comes on the half-beat: | - | - | - | - . Although adults usually prefer writing the numbers, I avoid having younger students write 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &, as it only muddies up the music, and counts can be mistaken for finger numbers.
Younger students do rhythmic counting at the beginning
(using tah-tay or one-na). However, within two or three years, I want students
to count the eighths on the correct beat, so we tap and verbalize differently:
1 un 2 oo 3 ee 4 or.
Identifying the rhythm motive
Often, before an eighth-note piece is taken home for the first time, I have the student circle any rhythm motive which occurs more than once in the piece, and we drill that example many times to make it indelible in the ear and the hand.
Recognizing rhythm motives in a piece can be very helpful in avoiding potential problems. A measure that is often misplayed after the first week of practice can be found in Bach's Minuet in G:
Do your students usually slow down the left hand in measure 8 like mine do?
First, I find out if the student can easily play
the zig-zagging of down an octave, up a seventh. If they have no trouble
with this, then the slowing down is most likely a rhythm problem. In that
case, I have the student circle the rhythm motive 
each
time it appears in the right hand in the first seven measures, and then
discover that the left hand does the same thing in measures 8-9.
The truism that short notes go to long notes can't be emphasized enough. It is so tempting for an inexperienced student to see beamed eighths as belonging together as a separate entity. It helps to draw an arrow above the example from the beamed eighths to the long note. And then to verbalize the rhythm: going to the ______.
Granted, it is probably that "little note" in the right hand that throws them off, or the placement of measure 9 on the page, but however they play the appoggiatura, the hands will fit together nicely when the left hand is played correctly.
or
Click for next page of this article
