| 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.
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