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.