Teaching Notes, 20101006

The previous class wasn't so productive, and so this time I wanted to back to using things that clearly worked during previous classes - rhythm sticks! But, I still wanted to try new material.

Pay Me My Money Down	Lead class while singing the song
While playing uke, I led the class in while I sang the chorus; it only took two iterations of the chorus to get the class inside the room. I then tried teaching them the chorus to them, which I had prewritten on the board. They sang it with ease. (I need to make sure more lyrics that I actually get to are on the board.) I then took about 30 seconds to talk about what the song was about, and how while no one was really going to jail, the workers really wanted to get paid. I then had them respond back to me with the 2nd and 4th lines of the chorus as I sang the first stanza. I also pointed to the board when it was time for the class to respond, which helped, I think. I then followed up the first stanza with another iteration of the chorus. I then sang the third stanza with the same prompting for an answerback, and then another iteration of the chorus. Next, I asked the class if this was a happy or sad song. I hadn't really talked about major vs. minor, and I wasn't going to yet, but I was curious to see what the class responses were, since this was a song with hard (as in life-hard) lyrics to a major tune. There wasn't any real right or wrong answer here. I then asked the class if the song sounded happy or sad without the words, and few could disassociate the song from the words. I then made up bogus lyrics talking about ice cream and such to the tune, and that of course made the class believe it was quite a happy song. I then followed up with singing the 4th stanza, while prompting the class to respond. And of course, I ended with an iteration of the chorus. If you're wondering about the 2nd stanza, well, here's the whole song: 1. Well I thought I heard the captain say, [pay me my money down], tomorrow is our sailing day [pay me my money down] 2. Soon as the boat was clear of the bar, [pay me my money down], the captain hit me with the end of a spar, [pay me my money down] 3. I wished I was Mr. Howard's son, [pay me my money down], sit in the house and watch the work get done, [pay me my money down] 4. It's been 40 days and nights at sea, [pay me my money down], the captain worked every dime from me, [pay me my money down] I figured I'd skip the 2nd stanza and not have to explain why I was hit by a spar.
Still Gotta Get Up	Teach a little more of the song
I used the familiar "Well Enough Said" as a transition, but then I then introduced the group response, "Still gotta get up in the morning". We practiced this for a bit, and then I played the song on the boombox. While the song was playing, I passed out one rhythm stick to each of the students. (I wanted to keep their attention and make the 2nd stick a dangling carrot so that I could cover more material.) Each time the song featured "Well Enough Said", I prompted the students to do the extended response. After the song ended, I asked the students what the tempo was of the song. I also had to consequently review what "tempo" meant. I then reviewed the other 3 tempo terms that we had covered in previous classes. I then passed out a second stick while replaying Still Gotta Get Up, although I didn't let the song complete for time considerations.
Rhythm Sticks	Practice simple patterns
After a quick stick review, I had the students follow me just keeping a beat, which still takes a little longer to do than I hoped. Once I had the students all together, I then wrote four Kodaly ta's on the board to represent the even stick hits we were doing. I offered to the class that musicians like to count in four, and when we have four lines/parts/beats, we have a "measure". Each one of the beats represents a quarter of the measure, and so each of those taps is a quarter beat/note. Yay math. The first rhythm I had the class play was simply 4 quarter beats. In keeping with the theme of "4", I counted to 4 before starting, as I wanted to get them used to also counting with me. Then, I replaced the second beat with a pair of eighth notes, and I drew them connected in Kodaly fashion. We then played the rhythm together (4 beats on, 4 beats off), until it was reasonably together. Next, I changed the 4th beat also to a pair of eighth notes, and we practiced again. Next, I changed the last beat to a set of 4 sixteenth notes. I don't recall talking about sixteenths, but the though of squeezing all of the notes in one beat was an exciting thought for the students. They never really got it down cleanly, even when slowing down the rhythm, but it was a lot of fun. For the last few minutes, I had the class do rhythm echos similar to what I did a few weeks ago, where I played about a measure's worth of stuff, and the class repeated what I played. I eventually migrated the class back to the Kiakahi rhythm that I taught a few weeks ago, which some remembered. Then, I played Kiahaki while cleaning up the sticks.

If I had more time, I was going to try to introduce a triplet - that may be something that I do the next time I have the class work with sticks. Speaking of sticks, this class was far more successful than last week's class, and so I may just have to do more sticks earlier. I'll also have to find a way to sneak in other percussive instruments, as I think it would be interesting for the students than to just play with sticks all day.

I had Agadu ready just in case I needed more material. To no surprise, I didn't need it.

Teaching Notes, 20100929

I had a lot planned for this week, and I was hoping to go through as much as I could. It was also Confucious Day at the school, and so I figured I'd try to do something Chinese-related for the first time in a school with a Mandarin immersion program. Similar to last week, I had the bigger class first.

Kungshi Ni	Lead class while listening to the song. Lead into concentric circles.
So, this was quite the challenge. I wanted to lead the students into concentric circles, and so I asked the students to hold hands, but what I discovered is that to 3rd and 4th graders, holding hands is no longer socially acceptable. I even tried to do the Sanna Longden "ewww" hand wipe, but that didn't make the students feel any more comfortable. As a result, we lost a little bit of time trying to get the students to link up. When I was able to bring in the students, I walked them around the edge of a rope circle, but students seemed to have a bit of a hard time staying linked and walking outside of the circle. It got even more chaotic when I brought my section into the circle - nearly everyone close to the circle started crashing in. So, rather than have concentric circles, I had a half circle on the outside, and a blob of kids on the inside. The one thing that was interesting is that some of the students knew the song. I asked if they had encountered the song in class, and none said that they did.
Staff review	Clef review, talk about other notes
I only did this with the first class, as I realize that this really is too much of an interruption of what I wanted to cover. I sped things up by having 3 kids write on a large staff simultaneously. I quickly reviewed the notes (Do through Sol), and then I talk about how Do could be positioned anywhere on the staff. I had the class go up and down the 5-note scale. I then wrote "Sol" where G is on the treble staff, and then I had the class work down the scale - causing Do to be off the scale. I then talked about how the staff really can't contain the range of our voices, and one has to add lines as necessary in order to represent notes above and below the staff. I did the same thing going up - starting with Do on the upper E.
Kungshi Ni	Teach Dance
I was pretty happy that none of the students had danced to Kungshi Ni. I first had to get the students to pair up, which meant reforming the concentric circles. For the first class, the teacher snapped into pairup mode and quickly paired up the students. For the second class, I did the pairing up. Anyhow, at least we had circles. I had one piece of advice for the students: Never lose your partner. Of course, the dance later will involve switching partners. :) Next, I had the students practice the step-step-step-hop pattern. We practiced the pattern quickly, then did it two times in a row. Then, we did it three times in a row, and added two slow steps. Finally, I had them repeat this larger pattern. Then, I had the students turn to each other and do a bow. You know what, though - all that pretty much took the rest of the time. I wanted them to try to do a partner switch, but it ended up in total chaos.

This turned out to be one of my least productive classes, and perhaps I was just trying to do way too much, or had too high expectations for the class. The second class had so much commotion that the teacher actually ended class early, so they never really got to do much of Kungshi Ni.

I might try to reintroduce Kungshi Ni, but closer to Chinese New Year.