| I Can Sing Up High | Warmup. |
| Similar to last week, I said "Good morning," and I was met with sleepy responses. This was an easy excuse to have them warm up with this song. Students remembered the song and movements easily. I had them repeat the song faster and faster with a little bit of body movement (but with feet mostly in place), and they had fun with it. | |
| Pass The Shoe (from Keep It Moving workshop) | Have students learn the chant/song, then play the game with a shoe. If it works, then have them play with their own shoes. |
| I didn't really have any neat transition to this; I just started singing the song. This song is pretty short, and not hard to learn. However, to practice the movement, I had them use my son's old shoe, which made the first class extremely squeamish; many flinched and could not keep the beat as a result. Others held the shoe with the minimum two fingertips, which also made keeping the beat difficult. I didn't bother trying to have the whole class shed shoes for the first class. The second class was a little less squeamish when I told them right upfront that the shoe was clean. After each iteration of the song, I asked the student holding the shoe if it was his/her shoe. I then had the whole class try it out with their own shoe (and fortunately, by having the teacher sit out, I had a perfect 20 in the circle). The whole class version worked reasonably well, although after each iteration I had to pause to recollect everyone's attention. The students also occasionally missed a shoe; after 5 iterations, probably about only 75% of the class had their shoe back. Originally I wanted to emphasize staccato, but I never made it a point. As it became clear that the students weren't really keeping beat, the songs phrases became slower and more irregular, making staccato more difficult to illustrate. This was an activity from the Keep It Moving workshop that I could not attend; Joanne Read sent me a copy of the handout. Thanks, Joanne! | |
| Rhythm Instruments | Bring out 4 Djembe, a number of hand drums and rhythm sticks. Have the Djembe players play the solos. |
| I had rhythm sticks for basically half of the class and 5 hand drums. That meant that I had to bring out a tambourine if I ran out, as I wanted to alternate rhythm sticks with something else. The 4 Djembes were placed roughly equidistant from each other, as best as you could with 20 students and alternating rhythm sticks. I first had the class play quarter notes, emphasizing playing together and resting together. The first class was actually better than the second class at playing together and resting in between beats. I then had the students play 4 beats on, followed by 4 quarter rests (but still counting). That took a little bit of time to have all of the students rest properly particularly for the first and last beats of rest. To get the solos started, I would point to one of the Djembe players, right before the 4 rests, and then it was that Djembe player's turn to do what they wanted to do. Most of the time, the soloists simply played 4 quarters, but there was usually one person who would do anything (which was perfectly fine). I eventually had the students all move one position to the left, so that no student was just playing rhythm sticks. Students who didn't get a chance to play on the Djembe (3/5ths of them seemed a little sad that I moved on, and in retrospect perhaps I should have just taken the additional time to have all of them take solos. But, I'll try something more along those lines in a later class. | |
| Two Hands Make... | Quick Review. |
| I had this on my list of things to do in case I felt I was going to have extra time in the class. I didn't end up doing this in either class. | |
| If You've Got One | Repeat the same lesson that I did on January 16th |
| Students remembered this - I started with twiddling my thumb, and most caught on right there. The only deviation I did this time when compared to January 16th is that during "4", I indeed wiggled my knees and signed "more", rather than wiggle my whole body. I didn't exactly plan it that way - it just came out like that, but the students didn't seem to care. I quickly went into the recorded song, and some students did sing along, even though it's way lower than their voices really support, and neither class seems to want to sing an octave higher than the recording or how I sing. Originally I didn't think I'd have time for this, but I did just manage to squeeze it in. | |
| Razzama Tazzama | Review with a few, add a new verse in the middle, finish with old verses. |
| This was as successful as the first time. As the song went on, students were doing the "Wally Woo Hoo" with a big flop backwards, but in order to keep the group moving, I didn't wait very long for the students to recover. It was a matter of keeping the activity short (we were pressed for time), and to get the students to keep a consistent beat. There were some different phrases that I wanted to add in between the original 2nd and 3rd stanzas, namely:
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| Old King Glory On the Mountain | Try the song one more time. |
| It only struck me now (as I write this) that I did this 3 times over the past 4 or 5 classes, which is a bit of an overload. The first class proceeded pretty well, but the students were a little more giggly than usual, which led to the teacher shutting down the class with only 6 students left in the inner circle to go. I'll have to find a way to prompt the class so that they shrink the circle with more alacrity and less noise. The second class was able to finish the song well, although again I had hoped to end the song with most of the class lined up ready to leave, but that didn't quite happen. | |
There wasn't anything special backpocketwise that I had planned - I suppose the Two Hands poem would have worked out if I needed more time. I did still have the previous week's backpockets handy (comparing bumblebee recordings (strings vs. Bobby McFerrin), Polly Wolly Doodle, Bushel and a Peck, Wake Up You Lazybones).
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