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.
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