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.