| Pay Me My Money Down | Lead students into the room while playing the song |
| I brought my family to see Dan Zanes the Saturday prior, and DZ entered the theatre while singing this jig, so I went ahead and tried it. I repeated the chorus a few times, and then I stopped to talk a little about the song, and how the phrases had the response "Pay Me My Money Down". The song lyrics drew some curious looks ("Pay me or go to jail!"), and so I don't know if I would use it again. Ironically, perhaps the song is better suited as a K-1 song, since the students wouldn't care so much what the words meant. I had a little trouble remembering some of the regular phrases, which probably didn't help the momentum. | |
| Rhythm Sticks | Teach rhythm patterns, both via echo and on the board (Kodaly) |
| I wanted to experiment a bit with some different rhythms, so after reviewing rules regarding the sticks, I had the students follow me with some different, varied rhythms. I then wrote some rhythms on the board, using Kodaly symbols and names. I was able to introduce the ti's and tiki's, but I didn't got as far as talking about quarter/eighth/sixteetnth notes. (That'll be for a later class.) I also managed to get the 1st class to play the first measure of one of the main rhythms used by the LSJUMB (Stanford Band) drum section. When the students had enough with trying to play written rhythms, I had them follow me to a song ("Sunshine and Lollipops" by Lesley Gore, also found on the Cloudy With a Side of Meatballs soundtrack). The song is actually pretty fast, and I warned the students that they had to keep up with me; if they got lost, they were to try to rediscover the beat and go from there. The students kept up reasonably well, although at some point I started playing to the drum hit (which is on the upbeat, not the beat) and I found that some students kept playing on the beat; perhaps they thought they were lost and were trying to find it. I had planned on also doing a rain pattern, where one person does what the person to their left does, but I completely forgot to try. | |
| Wimoweh | Review, get that 3rd part in |
| The sticks took so much time that I didn't get a chance to do this at all. The next time, I should just try to get the students just to sing the "In the Jungle" line. | |
| Paddy O' Furniture Dance(Sanna Longden) | Teach, dance to music! |
| I have no idea if the real name of this dance is called "Paddy O' Furniture", but this is the Irish circle jig dance that Sanna Longden taught during her workshop earlier in the year. This involved grouping the students in 3 or 4; the first class I had 18 (yay!) but the 2nd class had 17, which meant two groups of 4. I sort of rushed the teaching of the dance (especially for the second class, where I found myself very short on time), and I noticed that the dance as taught is actually pretty hard for 2nd graders, as it changes the pattern quickly. Instead of walking and doing everything that the dance prescribed, I had the students walk in one direction, then reverse direction (which was hard as they tried to turn the entire group of 3 or 4 in a gate fashion), then do a left hand star, then a right hand star, and then the leprechaun jump. I had the students change patterns only after they all pretty much had the current pattern established, andt the leprechaun jump was a simple leprechaun move to the next group, rather than have the same twist. I did this twice with the 1st class, but only once with the 2nd class because of time. I did want to try to give as many children as possible the chance to be a leprechaun. The sticks took so much time that I didn't get a chance to do this at all. The next time, I should just try to get the students just to sing the "In the Jungle" line. | |
While I spent an unusually long amount of time on sticks, I felt it was worth it. At some point, I will want to introduce toned instruments like the metallophones or xylophones in the room. Backpocket items included Down By The Sea, and another run through Somewhere Over The Rainbow.
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