Teaching Notes, 20091116

Because of an illness, I had to cancel my class for the previous week. As a result, I was left with only one class before Thanksgiving.

Over the River and Through the Wood	Use as an entrance song. Immerse students and have them sing it.
I sang the song as I led the students into the class. After singing it twice through, I added some minor movements to the song, particularly for "the horse knows the way" (motion riding a horse), "oh how the wind" (sign wind), "stings the toes" (point to the toes) and "nips the nose" (point to the nose). I stopped the marching in order to teach the motions, but then I had the students re-march in a circle after teaching the motions. The students seemed to learn the song reasonably well; most knew the melody but not many of the words coming in. Originally, I was hoping to teach both phrases, but it was clear that it would have taken multiple weeks to do it. I could try teaching the other half for the next class.
Do Re Mi	Have students understand the concept of "Do" as the primary tone of a song
Before the class started, I placed stools all around the class. After finishing up "Over the River" (which ends with the word "Go"), I took a stool, pointed to it and said "Go" with the same pitch that we used for the song. I then had the class sing "Go" whenever I jumped right behind the stool. I then changed "Go" to "Do", and then talked about how Do was in every song, and usually the last note of the song. Most of the class was able to match pitch but only after I moved up the pitch a few steps, which was a nice segue into a moveable Do. I then added Re and Mi, and then danced around Do, Re, and Mi while having the students watch and sing on command. Some students asked about Fa (and some just sang Fa and the other pitches), so adding the others may be reasonably easy when it's time.
5 Fat Turkeys	Immerse the students into the song, with hand motions
I used this song last year, and so I was hoping for a quick review of the song. Ideally, I wanted this to be a quick 1- or 2- minute break between other songs. Just like last year, hand motions really help.
Hey Ho, Fall is Here Round	Review a 2-way "round", then try a 4-way round.
Most (but not all) students remembered the round attempt from the last time. Reviewing the song (I had the lyrics on the board again) was easy, and then I split the class in two again for a 2-way round. I recorded the 2-way round twice for each class. Then, I split the class into quarters, and tried (and recorded) a 4-way round. What I noticed was that in the 2-way or 4-way round, the later groups more often than not tried to outsing the previous groups, and so their sounds tended to drown out the other groups. They also tended to sing a bit faster (I told students to watch their leaders, not me, even though I was trying to gesture a steady beat) than other groups, and that made the end of the rounds a bit muddy. Still, there were times in the recordings when you could really hear multiple parts fit well. Knowing that it's unlikely to always get an even number of students for each group, I need to probably put the extra students in the earlier groups. For the second class, I forgot to illustrate that going in a circle in the 4-way round was called a "round". Whoops.
5 Fat Turkeys	Interject the song one more time.
Again, this was a nice distraction and transition to the next song.
Things That I Am Thankful For	Dive right into the song; teach by rote, then zipper it.
I didn't have a lot of time left by the time I got to this song, so I dove right into it. A few students knew the song, but enough didn't such that I had to teach the song phrase by phrase in the limited time I had. Afterwards, I talked a little about the meaning/history of Thanksgiving, and then asked students what they were thankful for. The first class gave straightforward answers about family, friends, pets, all of which I could also teach by sign. The second class offered a bunch of pets which I had to transform into family. I wrote people's suggestions (after my filtering) on the board, and so then we all zippered them into the song.
Everybody Oughta Know	Exit song; use the suggestions from Things I Am Thankful For
Singing a zipperable song after a zipper song is almost too easy. :)

I still haven't been able to mix in great motion in the middle of a class yet, and so hopefully soon I'll be able to do that in a later class. I also am still looking to add instruments to known songs. I do hope to build on Do-Re-Mi throughout the year.

Teaching Notes, 20091102

I was hoping to extend the previous class' songs right off the bat, and so I didn't have a lot of room for new material. I've been trying this time around to pipeline a lot more and have more recurring topics/themes/songs throughout the year, and so bits and pieces of the year's lesson plans are coming together, albeit slowly.

Everybody Oughta Know	Use as an entrance song. Immerse students and have them sing it
Both classes enter from the back door, and so I sang the song as I walked the students into the class. The students who I had last year clearly knew the song, but the others didn't quite know what to do with it, as I wasn't teaching by rote this time around. After sitting the students down in the circle, I proceeded to teach the students the song, noting that the 2nd to last phrase is not echoed. It took a while in both classes to get the students in general to sing loudly, and I hope they picked up the song well.
Name Clapping/Rhythm	Group names on the whiteboard by rhythm
I pre-wrote the students' names on the whiteboard, arranging them in 1- 2- and 3- syllable groups. I also split up the 2- and 3- syllable groups by where the accented syllable was, and I asked the students to figure out why names were split out in the way they were. I used flat lines (ta) to symbolize the syllable, and then used a carat to note the accent. I then had a student come up to the board and draw out my name ("Mr. Chen"). Interestingly, for the 2-syllable names with the accent on the second syllable (rare), those students who had those names understood immediately why their name was singled out.
Seasons (Hey Ho...)	Review, do a 1-pass round
The students remembered the song pretty well. I split the class in two, and had one person from each group be the leader. The leaders did reasonably well, although I had to remind them to sing loudly, and I also had to remind the students to follow their own leader. I started the second class at the 3rd verse instead of the 2nd, and it took a few tries before students got the hang of it. I told them that we'd record the attempt the next time, and I hope to split the class in 3 or 4 parts. To help students focus on singing with their leader, I had prewritten the words to the song on the board.
Minor/Major exploration	Recall Halloween songs in minor; experiment with minor songs in major and vice versa
I never got around to this for either class, but this would have been an experimentation where we took songs that were minor and flipped them to major. We'd do the same thing in reverse for other songs.
Fresh from the Kitchen	Teach song quickly, run through the class names.
I never got through this either. Fortunately, I had forgotten the nametags for one of the classes, so this would have been a little difficult.
Victor Vito (Laurie Berkner)	Dive right into the song; teach by rote.
I sang the first half of the song, then taught that half by rote. I also had them clap twice after "beans" and "rice", which gave the students something to do and think about during the song. While teaching the song, I asked the students if they knew what a rutabaga was. I also asked the teacher, and only one of the two teachers knew. As for collard greens, students weren't sure what they looked like, but they were sure they were green. The second half of the song is of course really easy teach. During the first class, we sang it completely seated. During the second class, after teaching the first two iterations of the song (well, the students were only immersed into the 2nd iteration), we got up and marched to the song, which made it a lot more appealing to the students. This was a serious hit, even for those students who had never heard the song before. Because we were marching, I had the students march into a line at the end of the song so that I could sing "to eat some spaghetti with youuuuuuu!" to the students; that worked out really well as a way to have the class exit.

I had the first class exit to "Everybody ought to know", which was a little awkward; exiting to Victor Vito was a lot better. I also had Austrian Yodeler with instruments planned, as I did want to get instruments into the class soon.