Teaching Notes, 20090605

Originally, I was planning on two more lessons to end the year - 5/22 and 5/29. However, around 5/22, I was ill, and so I had to cancel my class. Then, 5/29 turned out to be a day off for the children (affecting the entire Cupertino school district). I wanted to get one more class in, so I tried to cover as much as I could during the following Friday, which was also the last full Friday day of classes for the students.

Adding to the scheduling fun was the fact that the second class had a rehearsal for their spring show (in which I wasn't really involved), and so their class was moved until right after lunch. I discovered that that really meant slightly less than :30, as there's a little bit of time overhead spent collecting the children from lunch.

I wanted to get in solo experience for everyone, and so the main focus was going to be the drumming. But, I did want to provide some last inspiration to the students to get them to sing to anything.

It's a Very Good Day	Review song, but also focus on the middle portion ("I can feel the sun..")
I used "It's a Very Good Day" plenty of times in class, and usually while passing out instruments during the 2nd half of the year. This time, I did spend time passing out instruments (see the next section), but in the middle of passing out the drums, I stopped to teach them the middle of "It's A Very Good Day". I also noted how outside wasn't really sunny as the lyrics suggested, so I changed them to "It's a very good day for running through the clouds". I also noted that if it were rainy, then we'd sing about playing in the rain. Asking "why?" seemed to always garner the right response given what was sung. I kept the song alive enough to pass out instruments to all of the students.
Drums and other Rhythm Instruments	Pass out drums (djembe), tambourines, rhythm sticks, shakers, hand drums, guiros. Have students on the djembe take solos while the rest of the class played 4 beats on, 4 beats off (during the solo). Rotate students so that everyone gets solo time.
I tried to space out each type of instrument evenly enough so that everyone got a chance to play each instrument. However, neither class had an even 20 students, so this was difficult to achieve. I made sure however, that everyone at least got solo time, which meant introducing a 5th djembe when necessary. I had the students practice the 4-on, 4-off again and it took just a little bit of time to achieve the good silent 4-beat rest. The students then got their chance at the solos, and some students really had a lot of fun with them; it was their time for their own self-expression, even if it was only for 4 beats at a time. One student didn't play much (not sure why), but I used that as an illustration of a different kind of solo, where the student was resting in their own way.
My Bonnie	Review My Bonnie, teach various ways to sing it
Here was my chance to encourage students to sing anything to tunes they recognized. At this point, they really knew the tune of My Bonnie, and they were eager to play any game involving the song. But, instead, I wanted them to explore other ways of singing the song: My kitty's gone lost in the branches/My kitty's way up in the tree My kitty's gone lost in the branches/Who'll bring back my kitty to me? or... My kitty likes eating my ice cream/My kitty like ice cream you see My kitty likes eating my ice cream/Oh, bring back my ice cream to me. I purposely wore a t-shirt with a cat eating ice cream during the class, and I wanted to make the point that you could create lyrics out of anything. The chorus of course is fully dependent on the last line, and the students were able to figure out what the chorus was by the the time we were singing about ice cream. Then, I pulled out this one: Who stole the last chocolate chip cookie?/The cookie jar's empty you see Who stole the last chocolate chip cookie/Oh bring back my cookies to me. That of course provided a very easy transition to the next exercise.
Who Stole The Cookie From the Cookie Jar	Play the game, but enforce the beat; send students who miss the beat to the center as cookies.
Like before, I started the chant, but then I told the class (in beat) If you miss a name If you miss a beat Then you will be a cookie in the Cookie jar Those lines of course, came straight from my own elementary school music teacher. To help out the students, I had them again choose the name of the student next to them, so that they didn't have to choose a name out of thin air. It also ensured that everyone got a chance. The students for the first 3rd of the circle did a pretty good job at keeping the beat, but as the game went on, we started getting cookies in the jar. I tried to be lenient, saving the cookie jar for the most egregious offenders; if students were early on the beat, they were saved from the jar. The students really had a fun time with this, and none felt they were singled out when they went into the jar. My jar had no limits, unlike other variants where the jar usually held only the most recent beat-offender. I only had time in the first class to do this.
The Longer, The Faster	Play the game.
This was basically a treat for the students as their last activity, as this was always a big winner. I think the hardest part was making sure that everyone got picked; it was usually the boys, particularly in the second class, who tended to pick only boys, while everyone else did a better job distributing the selections. This worked out well as a last event.

The first class actually had a minute left before they were going to join the second class in their spring show rehearsal, so we decided to sing Old King Glory On The Mountain while holding hands and walking to the door. While the first class probably struggled more with focus over the year and the teacher had to shut the class down early, this time I think they sensed that this was the last music class, and so during the last parts of the class this day, they were pretty well focused. The teacher also allowed more latitude that she normally did with the giggling.

I'm going to miss teaching the classes; they were both wonderful, and I felt that they really did grow musically over the course of the year. The second class gave me a thank-you book that they constructed, which was very heartwarming. I don't know if I'll be at Montclaire again next year, as I'm still hoping to teach closer to home at Nesbit in Belmont, but Montclaire was indeed a wonderful place to teach, and probably had the better stocked music rooms in the Bay Area.