Teaching Notes, 20101110

This week, I really wanted to get the students dancing again, which sort of meant Agadu or I would have had to find something else. I also wanted to do something different for an entry, as I felt I was reusing and overusing the same material for starter songs.

Flight of the Bumblebee (McFerrin/Ma)	Lead class quickly while listening
I led the class in (seated in stadium arrangement, which appears to be my favorite alignment), and quickly had them sit down and listen. While the song was still playing, I asked the students what they heard, and eventually in both classes someone thought they were hearing a fly or a bee. I then asked them what instruments they heard - most commented that they heard some sort of stringed instrument. I then asked them to try to pick out some other "instrument" - which of course was supposed to be the voice of Bobby McFerrin. Only after a lot of guesses did one student in only one of the classes figure it out.
Staff Exercises	Write out clefs again, review scale
We hadn't reviewed the staff and scale for a while, so I decided to do this again, even though it sort of sucks the momentum out of the class. Students seemed to remember reasonably well the notes up to La. I then introduced Ti and the upper Do. I then talked about the octave, its significance, and how there were 8 notes inclusive between the ends of the octave. I spent a little bit of time trying to get the students to match my pitch with each note sang, and I felt that I only achieved moderate success here; some students started getting bored when I kept walking around with a single pitch. There was also a lot of cacophony when I tried to have the students do the octave jump.
Agadu	Teach motions, dance to song
So, the one big thing I learned from last week was not to introduce "Agadu", at least by name; it's too risky and leads to crazy giggling. So, instead, I just had the students copy my motions. I first did the hand motions a few times in no real order, and the I did them in the order of the song. I then started doing them while counting to 4 for each measure - however, there is a rest on the 8th beat, and so I intentionally whispered "4" when we reached that note. I figured I wouldn't talk much about rests until we spent more time on rhythms (i.e. another day). When it was time to introduce the 2nd half/form of Agadu, I was going to have the students walk back and forth - but first, I had the students remember where they started. (Note to self: also make sure that no one's too close to a wall - it'll save unfortunate accidents later!) After walking forward (clap) and walking backwards (clap), I stopped the students and had them look where they ended up. Most were nowhere near their starting spot, and so I had them reset. The walking pattern I used was forward-back-forward-back-left-right, followed by two measures of just getting back to the starting spot. It was finally time to do this to music, and when the music started, I could tell that some students were amused and intrigued by the tunes, and so I had to be very deliberate in my motions in order to keep the students' attention. The song is pretty fast, and so I had to keep announcing moves when it was time to walk and clap. Agadu has a weird cut near the end of the song where the 2nd form only lasts 4 measures instead of 8, and reintroduces the 1st form with a long "aaaaagaaaaaadu", and so I had to tell the students to listen for an unexpected change. We ended up going through the song twice. Upon finishing the song the 2nd time, I asked the students if anyone knew what language it was. I really didn't expect any of them to know, and so I didn't tell them the answer, asking them to think about it for the next class.

I conquered Agadu! Yay! Ultimately, the classes do respond very well with motion, and it seemed easier to teach motion before accompaniment; when the music was going, many of the students were able to sense the beat anyway.