Exercises for exploration of the voice

It is important for students to warm up their voices and to know about how to look after and protect their voice. Your music or singing teacher or a registered speech and drama teacher will have good ideas for voice warm ups and might be a useful resource to invite in to talk to students about their voices.

Once you have chosen and worked on an exercise it is important for students to practise the skills they have learnt with a piece of text so that they develop a sense of the power of voice to add meaning to text and to create character and atmosphere.

Exercises to develop awareness of the jaw, lips, and tongue

Jaw

• Yawning-open wide
• Wag the bottom of the jaw from side to side, gently

Lips

• Humming continuously mmmmmmmmmm
• Humming mmmmm, brmm, brmmm, zmmmm, zmmmm
• Horse – blowing through lips
• Cow – moo, moo
• Donkey – hee haw, hee haw
• Santa – ho ho ho

Tongue

• Poke in and out (five times)
• Pretend to lick an ice cream
• Push against the inside of the cheek, left then right
• Paint the roof of your mouth with your tongue
• Say – la la la la

Exercises for articulation

Rhymes to practise
Katy caught a naughty kitten
Lips, teeth, tip of the tongue
Giddigiday, giddigidie, giddigidah

Celery raw develops the jaw,
But celery stewed is more easily chewed.

Articulatory agility
Is a desirable ability
Manipulating with dexterity
The jaw, and the tongue, the palate and the lips.

Tongue twisters/ tongue twister relay
Decide on three tongue twisters. Suggestions include:

• Rubber baby buggy bumper
• Black bug's blood
• Red lorry, yellow lorry
• Unique New York, Unique New York
• An Irish wristwatch

Divide the class into 4 or 5 teams. Appoint a judge from each team. These judges stand at one end of the room. The teams line up one behind the other. When the teacher calls 'go', each student must in turn run to the judge, say their tongue twister, and run back to their team where they tag the hand of the next runner and go to the back of the line (as per a relay). If the student makes a mistake in the tongue twister s/he must run back to their team and run again to have another go. Each student will end up running three times, once for each tongue twister.

Articulation rap (consonant sounds)
Teach students the three main consonant groups, that is fricative, continuant, and plosive. Ask them to divide into small groups and devise a rap using all three sound groups.

For example: Ppp, mmmm, mmmm, Ppp mmmm, mmmm, Bgj, bdjbdj, aaaah

They could use a known rhythm, make up their own, or devise to a theme, that is 'drinking very fizzy coke on a hot day', 'the sound of an aquarium'.

Bread/butter (inflection, intonation)
Students work in pairs to improvise a conversation using only one word each. It shows them they can communicate without words by using inflection and intonation. Pairs of words to use could be:

• parent/child
• girlfriend/boyfriend
• teacher/student
• tour guide/tourist.

Tick/cross grid (volume, chorus)
Draw a nine square grid on the board. (This can be expanded later.)

In each square place a tick or cross. The tick or cross may be small or big (make this distinction clear).

A tick is 'yes', a big tick is a loud 'yes', a small tick is a soft 'yes'.

A cross is 'no', a big cross is a loud 'no', and a small cross is a soft 'no'.

Have the class 'read' the grid in unison left to right, top to bottom. You might need to practise this several times. Try the following variations:

• read backwards
• divide into three groups and read the grid as a round.

Try having each group start at a different point, for example group one starts at the left of the first line, group two at the left of the second line, group three at the left of the third line and read through the whole grid.

Ooh aah orchestra (volume, chorus, focus)
Divide the class into two groups. One group is 'oooo'. The other group is 'aaaah'. Show the groups how you will 'conduct' them by pointing to them when you want them to make their sound, pointing low for a soft sound, high for a loud sound, a smooth movement side to side for a continuous sound, broken movement side to side for staccato sound etc.

Conduct the orchestra playing with the sounds. Have the two groups divide again into two and plan a recital for the following themes:

• A haunted house
• A magic/ contortionist show
• A fireworks display
• A body building contest.

Soundscapes
A soundscape is a drama convention that creates a picture using sound. For an excellent resource on soundscapes, see Level 4: A Group Soundscape.