Teaching Notes, 20101103

The school where I teach is on a year-round schedule, and so I had a 3 week break, during which I did absolutely nothing towards planning lessons. Because I was going to teach songs in parts, I arranged the class in the stadium arrangement (4 lines facing forward).

Hello World	Lead class while singing the song, sing in parts
I led the class in, singing the chorus; it took two iterations to get a class fully into the room. I then led the class to sing the first stanza, which I had prewritten on the board. After finishing the song with another iteration of the chorus, I then split the class into left and right halves so that they answered each other for each line of the stanza. We practiced it once, and then I recorded the song sung this way (including the chorus, which I continued to lead) on my laptop. I then played the song back to the students. The one thing I noticed is that with a split the volume is much lower, and so I had to remind the students to sing loudly. As expected, the students got a thrill hearing their voices on the playback.
Seasons	Teach, the split class and sing
This song ("Hey Ho, Fall is Here...") is something I used extensively last year in my 2nd grade classes, and as I had yet to do a song about the seasons, I figured I'd use this here. I had prewritten the song on the board, with the 1st and last lines colored blue, the 2nd line colored red and green, and the 3rd line color orange. (Well, at least, those are the colors that I can remember as I type.) I first had the class sing through (taught by rote), and then I had the class split up the 2nd line. Next, I had the two back lines sing the 3rd line. This provided a minor challeange to some of the students, since some ended up singing either half on, half off, then full on, and some sang half on and full on. The students were able to get the pattern after a couple of tries. I then switched things up; the 2nd line was split in the opposite direction, and I had the front two lines sing the 3rd line. Piece of cake - yet still fun for the students.

Believe it or not, that was it. I was hoping to do Agadu, and in the first class, I managed to try to get the students to recite the word "Agadu", and I was met with a sea of giggles, especially when I said "Agadu-du-du". Silly 4th graders.

I was also hoping to review the staff and intervals, but alas there was no time. The one thing I did discover from today's lesson: a 3-week layoff translates to a rusty voice, particularly when trying to sing in the upper registers.