One of the tasks a music educator who teaches early childhood, elementary, or middle school is given is to choose and teach a graduation song. This is not an easy task as one must choose, or give choices to the students, songs that are appropriate, that fit the personality of the grade level, and one that they can learn in the amount of time allotted.

Criteria

Over the past 25 years, I have taught numerous graduation/end-of-the-year/welcome-to-summer songs to preschoolers, kindergarteners, fourth and fifth graders, as well as assisted with eighth grade. When choosing a graduation song, I look for the following criteria:

• Is this a grade level that sings or chants?

• If they tend to chant more than they sing, would them creating their own graduation song be a better route to choose?

• Can this class handle voting on a graduation song?

• Is the song recognizable?

• Does the song have age-appropriate lyrics?

• What is the range of the song?

• Does a bass singer sing the song, and I am trying to teach it to elementary students? How will that affect them if they have heard it sung in a low octave?

• Will I accompany it, or can I find a karaoke version of it?

• Do I have students who can help with the accompaniment?

• How much time do we have to learn it?

• We will be able to rehearse it at the graduation venue?

• Does the graduation venue have a piano or a sound system?

• Will the students have access to microphones so they can amplify?

• Are there solo opportunities in the song? Do I want to pursue that?

These are a lot of questions to think about. And some of these questions are very specific to certain teaching situations. However, by using these questions as a guide, one can narrow down the graduation song choices.

Wakelet: End-Of-The-Year Graduation Songs

I created this Wakelet to assist music educators at this time of year with finding graduation songs that fit their preschoolers, kindergartners, higher elementary grades, and middle schoolers. The Wakelet is divided into four categories:

• Preschool/Kindergarten Songs

• Higher Elementary

• Middle School

• Articles about Graduation Song Choices

Below, I highlight songs from each category and how I used them with my students.

Preschool/Kindergarten Graduation Songs

Preschool graduation songs come with a few challenges. Preschoolers are not reading continuously yet, so songs with repetition and body movements or sign language are helpful because they assist the students with learning and memorizing the songs. Plus, many preschools are mixed ages of young 2s to older 5s. Therefore, some are not leaving the school to go to kindergarten yet. I often adapt the song and change the word graduation to “moving up” or “summer.” I also tend to choose songs that thank their teachers because being a preschool or kindergarten teacher is one of the most exhausting and rewarding jobs there are, and they are not thanked enough.

Dynamite by Taio Cruz

I love this video from 2011 where a daughter recorded her mother’s kindergarten graduation song. I have performed this one with our kindergartners and have used the video’s movements. They love it!

All I Really Need Version 2 by Raffi

My preschoolers performed this last year, and it was a big hit. The message is beautiful and repetitive so that they can easily learn and memorize it.

Others on the List

I have had my kindergartners and preschoolers perform the many other songs listed. If they know the pop song, they will immediately take to it. However, there are some songs that you have to know your audience. An example is the Amidon song, “I’m Growing Up.” If your school approaches gender identification, then this song will need some adaptations. Again, this comes back to knowing your audience and your administration. The Jack Hartmann song is very sweet, and in that video, he includes the sign language for the song. Finally, the parodies are always fun to perform if your students are into them.

Higher Elementary

Many music educators have to pick a song for their students who are leaving elementary school to go to a middle school in a different building or district. This can occur around grades 3, 4, or 5. The songs in this category are a little more mature than the songs in the preschool/kindergarten category. Some highlights include:

Best Day of My Life by American Authors

This video is a good one as the teacher includes movement and bucket drumming. This is a great way to include everyone in the graduating class. Those who are not comfortable singing or dancing can play the bucket drums. And those who want to dance can help create the movements to the song.

Once I Was Four Years Old by Lukas Graham

I like how the students and the music educator rewrote Graham’s hit song, “Once I Was Seven Years Old.” This could be a great project for you and your higher elementary students to do so that it comes from them.

Others on the List

Many of the other songs on the list or pop songs or ballades from movies and various artists. With higher elementary students, I give them a choice and let them vote via Google Forms. There are also times when I let the students submit the song choices as long as they wrote out the lyrics (then they were sure to check them) and that the lyrics had to do with growing up or moving on or feeling good about the day, etc. They also had to send me a link to the song. This has worked well for me, but this does not work for every grade level at every school.

Middle School

Finding a graduation song for middle schoolers can be like finding a needle in a haystack. Their tastes in music are unique and varied. Their vocal ranges run from small to wide. The songs on this list I gathered from various music education networks. I give no highlights on this category as each middle school graduation is different from each others, and only the music educator would know best what songs would work and what songs would not work. They are age-appropriate and cover some musical styles.

Articles about Graduation Choices

There are a few articles in this category, but the best are the two listed on the top from Katie Wardrobe’s Midnight Music. Katie has done the research and shared playlists on graduation songs for schools. Therefore, her lists are age-appropriate. Many of the other articles have a lot of ideas, but their lists contain songs with inappropriate lyrics or messages. Finally, the preschool article and the kindergarten graduation YouTube channel give you some more ideas on how to adapt simple songs into graduation songs.

Where Can I Find Karaoke Tracks?

YouTube would be a good place to begin, especially if you, or your school, is paying for YouTube premium. I also look at Apple Music because we have a subscription to that and I can find a lot of karaoke tracks. You can also try https://vocalremover.org/ and have the site remove the vocal track for you. Or, if you have students who are playing some of the instruments and you need those instruments removed from the file, a service like https://www.lalal.ai/ and others have the ability to do that. When our 8th graders sang “Life is a Highway” by Rascal Flatts, there was a student musician who could play the guitar part, so we used a service to remove the guitar from the karaoke track and he played along live.

What song are your students singing for graduation (if you have to do that with your students)?