Teaching Notes, 20100922

This time, I laid down four of the five ropes I normally use for the life-sized staff, and I arranged what I called "staggered stadium seating", where two ropes were on either side of the room, and there was minimal overlap in the middle. There was enough space in bewteen the ropes to fit kids nicely. I wanted to bring the sticks into class again, and I wanted to make sure that all of the students could watch me in front. The seating (in 4 clear sections) also allowed me to separate out the class for the first song.

As a little twist, the my two classes switched positions, so the first class was now my biggest class. I don't really prepare anything different, so it was all good to me.

Fanfare for the Common Man	Lead class while listening to the song. Discuss instruments
I had put down pictures of instruments featured in Fanfare on the ropes - a picture of a big bass drum for one of the front ropes, a picture of a floor standing cymbal for the other front rope, pictures of a trumpet and a french horn for one back rope, and pictures of a trombone and tuba for the other back rope. As students walked into the class, they were seated at one of the ropes, and I was able to get the class seated in about 45 seconds, as the students walked in pretty quietly, save for some reactions to the pictures of the instruments. As the song progressed, I talked about each of the instruments that the students were hearing, starting with the instrument pictures at the front of the class. I also proceeded to tell students that if their instruments were played, to wave their hands. (This was effective for the drums, but not so much with the cymbal.) I went around the room and fortunately the song seemed to oblige; I was able to talk about the higher brass right when they were playing, and I last introduced the lower brass, which is last to make its entrance into the song. As the trumpets continued to play, I asked the students how many trumpets they could hear. Most said 1, and I made up the actual number (5). But, I did try to convince them that the only way you can get 5 musicians to sound like 1 is if they are all playing together like a team. Hopefully that translates to more teamwork when it was time for them to play instruments as well. I went through the song twice, as the first iteration was partially consumed by the class entrances. After the second iteration, we talked about the instruments that we heard. I also asked the class if they could predict when the drums would play, and a few people noted that the drums would play as a response to the higher horns. I wish I had had time to go to Kinkos or similar to print out larger pictures of the instruments, and perhaps mount them to oaktag. I only had home-printed 8.5"x11" pictures.
Staff review	Have students draw a clef
I suppose this is something that keeps the students in line - picking well-behaved students to draw a clef on a prewritten staff on the board. It's fun, but it does eat up a bit of precious time. Nonetheless, the students seemed interested in doing this. I capped this off by reviewing the names of the notes that we've covered (Do->Sol). Interestingly, I had written quarter-note stems on the notes instinctively, and one of the teachers asked me how I knew which direction to write the stems. That'll have to wait.
Tempo	Review terms
This was a quick one. I asked them about what the tempo of Fanfare was, and few couldn't figure it out. Most forgot about Largo, and I mentioned to them that if they can't figure it out, or they don't hear a distinct beat, it's probably super-slow.
Rhythm Sticks	Pass out sticks, get class to follow me in various patterns
I passed out sticks again this time, but since I wasn't going to do anything requiring textured sticks, I passed them out as quickly as I could, even if it meant giving two sticks that were both smooth, or two sticks of different lengths. I suppose at some point I should sort the sticks out so that students didn't think they were getting a weird pair. I sang "Everybody Oughta Know" while passing out the sticks, from a suggestion from one of the students; otherwise, I was going to play "Oh My Goodness" on the boombox. I quickly tried to get the students into "ready" position, and then had them echo me in a single hit. Getting just that together was pretty hard; many students were interested in clicking the sticks as often as I wanted, and before I did anything terribly complex, I had to ensure that I had their full attention. In the smaller class, the teacher pitched in, which was an enormous help, as he was able to illustrate the proper echo. I also reminded the students that, similar to the single-sounding group of trumpets in Fanfare, we all wanted to sound like one pair of sticks. When I felt I had the students together, I then added a second click, which again turned the class into a mess. Having the teacher in that one class pitch in resulted again very positively in recollecting the students back together. After two hits, I had the students replace the first stick hit with a ground tap. (To illustrate this, I had a chair in front of me covered with a towel.) Getting the students to do this took a little bit more time, but not as much as the transition from 1 hit to 2 hits. Due to time constraints, the first class had to end right around here. I then doubled the pattern: ground, click, ground, click. Then, I added a twist - after the 4 hits, I added a ground-click-click where the first two new hits were eighth notes instead of quarters. I hadn't talked about quarter notes (or note duration, really), and so it was a little harder to teach this, and I lost many of the students quickly. I had one student also ask if it was ok if we counted all the way through, and that helped tremendously - we ended up counting to 6 for this, and that brought back the class together. I then added two beats of rest, bringing the pattern to 8 beats. We then practiced this a few times until we were out of time. I then played "No Ka Moku Kiahaki" (Keali'i Reichel) on the boombox while they were getting ready to file out, and I asked them to listen for the pattern that they just played (which arrives at the end of each stanza). A few students were enthralled by the Hawaiian chant; when the pattern showed up a few noted that they heard it. This to me sounds like something I should do again very soon.

With the classes switched, I didn't necessarily get more time per class, but I certainly I was able to validate that the larger class is really going to be the tougher class, no matter what time the class starts. I guess that doesn't really come with any real surprise.

I totally forgot to have the kids warm up to Zingamama after listening to Fanfare. Whoops.

I thought the sticks were moderately successful, and especially for the smaller class, the students really showed interest. Maybe I need to have a whole class dedicated to sticks. It would certainly allow me to cover more, but it also means potentially losing some kids to disinterest after 5 minutes. It would, however, provide also the backdrop to introducing note duration.

My backpocket list is just like last week - huge.

Teaching Notes, 20100915

Now that the students were introduced to the staff in the previous class, I wanted to continue teaching new musical concepts, particularly tempo. I also hoped to bring the rhythm sticks back out and start talking about forms/patterns in songs. More theory, I say!

Hello World	Lead class into the room with the song, teach 2nd stanza
Similar to a previous class, I led the students in singing the chorus to Hello World. I had also prewritten the first stanza on the board, and after singing the chorus with the class, we echoed the stanza, and then finished with another run of the chorus. I then reminded the students that the stanza was really supposed to be sung together, not as an echo, so we sang through the stanza, capped off with another run of the chorus. The prewritten stanza was also written in 4 colors, with each line its own color. There are 8 lines to each stanza, so I rotated the colors through. I had the class, which was seated in a square thanks to ropes I had put down before class started, split into 4 based on the sides of the square, and I gave each group a color. I then instructed the students to sing their color and only their color when singing the stanza. It took a little bit of practice (and some students in the back row complained that they couldn't quite see the words), but eventually the classes were able to sing in parts, in a square. (I prefer to not call this a "round", since it's not really a round, even though we were singing around the room.) The first class was able to do the square a lot more quickly than the second, larger class. After a successful square, we ended again with the chorus. I had the second stanza also prewritten on the board, also in the same 4 colors in the same color order as the first stanza. I then had the class echo me as I sang the stanza, and then I had the class practice singing it in the square. We practiced twice before I then had the class put the entire song together - chorus, stanza 1, chorus, stanza 2, chorus. (One student actually asked about doing this which was a great segue.) It was in all a pretty long effort, but the students now have a full song under their belt.
Clef writing	Review the staff, write a treble clef
I had a bare clefless staff on the board, and I asked the students what it was. Unfortunately, students didn't quite remember the term "staff"; I got a variety of answers such as "note", "pitch", "do". They clearly knew it had something to do with music, but no "staff". After reintroducing the term "staff", I also told them that a staff wasn't really a staff until it was graced by one more thing - the clef symbol. I drew a treble clef a few times on the board, and told the class that drawing a treble clef well takes lots and lots of practice. I then invited a few students, one at a time to come up to the board and try writing the treble clef. Wow, that made the students behave! I could only have a few students do the drawing, and so I plan on doing this several times. Unfortunately, I forgot who went up, so making sure everyone gets the same number of turns over the course of multiple weeks is going to be a difficult.
Introducing Tempo	Discuss tempo, and find the beat in various songs
Before I jumped into discussing tempo, I had the students follow a clapping and tapping pattern. For the larger class, even this took a little bit of time. I varied the clapping and tapping just a bit to be sure that I had everyone's attention. I spent maybe a half of a minute reminding the students about the pervasiveness of a beat in any song. Next, I talked about the songs that we knew already, like Hello World, and how fast it "felt" to the students. I then talked about slow songs, and I introduced "Largo". I then played the Garden Song (Charlotte Diamond) for the students as a representation of Largo. As the song played, I clapped to the beat of the song, and I encouraged the students to do the same. I then introduced "Allegro", and played Victor Vito for the students. Again, I clapped to the beat, and the students followed. Next, I introduced "Andante", and I billed it as a medium speed; I then played "Raisins" (Barenaked Ladies), and again had the students find the beat while clapping. I know that I played a few other songs for them, but I can't recall what they were. But they all varied a little bit, and each time, I had the students clap to the beat and guess which tempo bucket the song fell into. I do recall playing "Mariposa Ole" (Dan Zanes), and a few students perked up as the song was in Spanish. I then also chose a student to walk around the square. I then clapped with the student's outer foot hit the ground, although I didn't tell the class what I was doing. Eventually students figured it out, and I then made the connection between Andante and a "walking" pace. Now, at this point, I was pretty much out of time. :( But, I did try to squeeze in Presto for the first class and I played "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows" (Lesley Gore) and the first class marched/danced out the class to the song. The second class' exit involved more chaos, as I played it but then the students were already getting up to leave as I started the song. I'll have to follow up with Presto the next week.

There was a lot that I prepped for that I didn't cover. For starters, I had written out the chorus to "Time" (Sweet Honey in the Rock) on the board, but we never got to it. I also had hoped to get a little more time w/ sticks (although I think I have to budget at least 10 minutes because of handout and pickup), and I wanted to sing a bit of Still Gotta Get Up In The Morning.

My backpocket list is also pretty huge now. Items on that list that aren't review include the Cookie Jar chant (although with 32 kids, that can take a looooong time), Epo I Tai Tai E, Botendere, and Tuwe Tuwe - all world music.

Teaching Notes, 20100908

At some point, I know I want to teach recorder and other instruments. Before that can happen, the students have to be able to read music, and before that happens, they need to understand the staff. So, for this class, I laid down the life-sized staff ropes, although this time I didn't have the life-sized treble clef to go with it. (I think I left it in the music room in last year's school in Cupertino.)

Still Gotta Get Up In the Morning	Lead class into the room with the song, walk the class through the staff
In past years, I've used something slower or less energetic to lead the students through the life-sized staff. But, since we had been practicing the start of this song as an answerback ("Well, Enough Said ... About That!"), I felt it would have been fun to bring them in. I told the students to sing whenever they heard something familiar, but few did. Instead, they were walking through half-giggling, sometimes clapping to the song. However, it was abundantly clear that the students weren't getting a whole lot out of the song, especially for the 2nd class, that I stopped the song after about 2/3rds of it during the second class rather than have it go to completion. Plus, for the second class (32 students), I was horribly running out of room trying walk around the staff lines. After the music stopped, I had students inside the staff move to the sides of the staff, thus forming a square around the staff. That was a bit harder than I expected.
Zingamama	Warm up the students
Since the students weren't singing as they went in, I felt that it was appropriate to warm up the students' voices. I started with a single echo of "Zingamama", and went down the scale, and only after doing that twice did I put it all together and have them echo the scale downwards. I never had them sing it with me; we were echoing the entire time. I totally forgot to do this with the second class.
Staff Introduction	Discuss the staff properties, note placement (Do-Mi-Sol), introduce Re, Fa
This was your typical intro-to-the-staff discussion, which without a treble clef, goes pretty quickly. I then had students recall the notes that we covered in past classes (Do, Mi, Sol), and I placed students on the G, and B lines (assuming a treble staff) representing Do and Mi. I then had a student guess where Sol was, and voila, the first student asked correctly picked the D line. I then talked about how notes can be in spaces, and that allowed me to introduce both Re and Fa. With five students now on the staff, I then walked up and down the notes, having the students sing the notes. Every so often, I'd try to get the students to match my pitch, and I'd say about 70% of them were doing it. I also introduced the term "scale" to the class. I'll be sure to introduce it at other times.
Rhythm Sticks	Introduce sticks, illustrate proper holding, have class follow my sticking
Before we started out with sticks, I had to rearrange the class by adding students currently on the sides of the staff to be in the middle of the staff. In the past when I've taught rhythm sticks, I've had the class always face me, and I definitely wanted to do that this time, mostly out of fear of the chaos if students weren't watching me. However, with so many students, I could tell that those sitting in the back corners weren't as attentive as those in front. Before passing out anything, I reminded the students about some groundrules regarding the sticks (no hitting people, play only when asked, etc.). I first passed out a single stick (the ridged one), and sang "Everybody Ought Know" while passing the ridged sticks out as quickly as I could. It took two iterations of the song in order to cover the entire class. The students responded nicely to the song. We then spent a tiny bit of time talking about the ridges before passing out the second stick (again, to the same song). I then quickly returned to the front of the room with my own pair of sticks. I first taught the ready position (two sticks up and apart), which isn't really an official position, but does have the students hold the sticks in a way they cannot play them. We then talked about how to hold the stick being hit so that the stick can resonate. That took a few repetitions, and I followed up with having the students try hitting the sticks while grasping them as tight as possible. Most recognized the usefulness of having an echo area formed by the hand holding the stick being hit. I also had the students rub the sticks together - first smooth on ridged and then ridged on smooth - to illustrate the effect of the ridges. Finally, it was time for the students to follow me. I first told the students to echo me, and that I'd be playing only one hit. I repeated this until I was able to get the entire class just hitting once, and wow it took a long time. But most students weren't necessarily just going off on their own - they'd just hit, maybe once or twice too many, and then realize that I had stopped. When the students mastered echoing a single hit, I then moved to slightly more complex hits (two taps, tap in the air, tap down below, stick rub), but I didn't really have a whole lot of time to do much more. In both classes, I eventually had the students follow me to a very steady but slow beat. The final stick "exercise" was to place the sticks in rest position, where both hands held the ends of both sticks, in front of the student. I then went around collecting the sticks while singing the chorus and one stanza of "Oh My Goodness, Look At This Mess" (Sweet Honey in the Rock).

And that was it! As the students processed to form a line out, I sang "Well Enough Said" one last time. I still haven't found a good exit song, and I'm not sure if it has to do with not really completing many songs at this point.

Regarding sticks - I think it would be helpful to have one pair that wasn't blue, as all of the students' sticks were blue. The differently colored stick pair would stand out a bit and might be more visible to the students among a sea of blue. (The school uniform is blue, too.)

The backpocket items are really starting to turn into a backlog, as I'm probably averaging a little less than 25 minutes of instruction for each class. I had prewritten on the board a lot of the chorus to "Time" from Sweet Honey, but I didn't get to that at all. I also had, just in case Wimoweh, Oonie Koonie Cha, Epo I Tai Tai E, Botendere, and Tuwe Tuwe.

Teaching Notes, 20100901

It's been a month now, and I was really hoping to have covered more theory than at this point than I had before. Originally, I was going to have the students walk into class and introduce them to the life-sized musical staff (using my ropes), but with only Do and Mi, I didn't think I would have quite enough notes for the kids to make the staff satisfying (for both myself and the students). So, I used those same ropes to mark a large circle, which turned out to be pretty useful - students, upon walking in, walked around the circle, and only a few of them dabbled with the rope. The most important part was that the rope nearly eliminated crowding, and the rope placement held up long enough so that I never really had to reposition the ropes.

Anyhow, I really wanted to get in theory. Here's what happened.

Hello World	Lead class into the room with the song, teach one of the main stanzas
I brought my guitar to class, and when the first class of students, as they were walking to class, saw it, they became really excited and chatty. However, the students were perhaps too noisy for the teacher, and so the teacher had the class return back to their room, and walk again to the music room. I fully supported this, and you know what - the class was tremendously well behaved! Bravo! I indeed had the students echo me (similar to the original song recording) while I played guitar, and similar to last year, I think the guitar really also kept the students' focus. The previous week, we had sung only the chorus, and so this time, I had prewritten the first stanza ("There are bikes to ride...") on the board. I also sang the song in G instead of C, which was more suitable for the children's vocal range. The first time through the stanza, I did have the students echo the song, and then we finished it off with a standard chorus. I only went through the song once because I was going to focus on it a little later...
Guitar vs. Ukulele	Compare the two, discuss differences
The students remembered the ukulele, and now that they saw the guitar in action, it was a good time to have a discussion that compared the two instruments. The students were pretty good at describing similarities (body, resonating hole, has strings, etc.) and differences (size, 6 strings vs. 4, "shiny" strings vs. black, guitar has a strap, etc.). What was nice is that the discussion gave a great percentage of the students to say something constructive during the class, which doesn't always happen with a class of 32. Similar to last week with the uke, I had the students strum a chord, although this time I warned them that the strings were metal, which would be harsher on the fingers. Most heeded my warning, but still there were some who plucked pretty hard and were surprised by the sensation. Also similar to the previous week, I tried covering up the hole, with a little more success this time, although for my guitar, it's actually pretty difficult to cover the entire resonating hole, as it's not a perfectly flat opening due to the fingerboard creeping over the hole.
Hello World (again)	Have class echo the 1st stanza, then sing through the first stanza
After we were done discussing the guitar and its merits, I went back to Hello World, and I had the class echo the 1st stanza which was written on the board. We went through that stanza deliberately slowly, without strumming, but when we finished the stanza, we finished with the chorus at the normal tempo, while I resumed playing the guitar. During this exercise, I realized that unlike previous years, I could play the guitar pretty loudly without fear of drowning out the class, when the class knew the song (which at this point, they did, at least for the chorus). I had the class next sing through the stanza without echo, which they did admirably. I then went right into the chorus again, and the students sang that with ease. I had originally planned on doing the next stanza, but I didn't; we had worked on this song long enough for a day.
Do-Mi-Sol	Review Do, Mi, introduce Sol
Yay. I finally got a chance to introduce one more Solfege note. I used the same hop-behind-the-chair approach that I took during the 1st week, and simply added Sol as a third note. (I did hear a few people sing "Re" when I jumped to Mi.) I again reviewed the significance of Do, using the last note of Hello World, and then I brought Do down to middle C, so that I didn't have to sing so high when singing the other notes. I also noted that Do was relative to whatever one was singing, although I don't think the concept of a movable Do really stuck with the students. I spent also some time trying to get the students to follow the pitches that I was singing. I'm hoping not only to get the students familiarized with the Do-Mi and Mi-Sol intervals, but I'm hoping that some of the students are going to remember middle C as Do (note: I haven't talked about letter-named notes yet) after the year has ended. To remind the students about the relationship among the three notes, I wrote them on the board such that Do was in the lower-left, Mi was in the middle and Sol was in the upper right. I then split the class into two halves, with the right half (from my perspective) assigned to "Mi" and the left half assigned to "Sol". I then jumped back and forth between the two notes, trying to get each half to sing only their note. Someone asked, "What about Do?", which led nicely to me instructing the entire class to sing Do. We practiced this for perhaps a minute - going back and forth from one note to the other. I suppose this was a very low level introduction to singing in parts, as at one point in either class, I straddled between Mi and Sol, hoping for both sides to sing their tone. It sort of worked, but by that time, many had lost their pitch and I didn't get a clean Sol-Mi chord. We'll try this again later.
Rhythm Sticks	Introduce them, maybe play some rhythms
I didn't have a lot of time to work on the sticks, but I really wanted to try them out. I spent a little bit of time talking about the differences between the two sticks (smooth vs. ridged). I then also demonstrated how to hold the sticks, alluding to the hole/space that the ukelele and guitars have. I then started with a regular beat, and I talked briefly about the ubiquitousness of the beat in all music. I then asked students if they know of things that regularly made sounds like what I was doing with the sticks - that is tapping approximately once per second. Eventually a student in each class brought up a clock, which allowed me to start singing the next song. (It also made me wonder if a lot of students these days only know of digital clocks.)
Time (Sweet Honey in in the Rock)	Introduce the chorus via echo
I only sang through two full lines of the chorus while I led the students back into a line and out the door.

I interjected "Well Enough Said" a few times and finally, more students than not responded appropriately with "About That". I hope to start teaching the entire song to the students soon.

The students in general were better behaved than last week, and that was a relief. One class teacher felt that the students were already too disruptive as they walked to music class, and so he had his class walk back to their room, and walk back again to the music class - that really helped eliminate further distractions for that class. I still think we have a bit of a logistical issue, as the first class still only has a net of 20-25 minutes of instruction due to the class officially starting right after recess ends. I'll have to think of a way to get those minutes back.

The whiteboard in this room is pretty big, but not as big as my previous school's board. The students can definitely read lyrics well, but I do notice that I'm limited to what I can pre-write on the board since I have to write large enough for the students in the back to see.

Backpocket items were aplenty: Wimoweh, Oonie Koonie Cha (again), Epo I Tai Tai E, Botendere, and Tuwe Tuwe. I have started also to collect a list of songs that I feel would be fun for the students to learn.