| Still Gotta Get Up | Lead class into the room w/ song, teach bridge |
Similar to what I did in a past week, I had the class walk into the room as I was playing the song. The song is pretty loud and it kept the students chattering as we walked in. Once the class was in, I stopped the music and then asked them to listen for something constantly repeating ("still gotta get up..."). I then resumed playing the song and kept playing until a number of students seemed to recognize the ostinato. Of course, I introduced that term to them, although I doubt any of them are going to really remember that term. I started teaching the bridge, which I had prewritten on the board ("well it don't matter..."). I had the lyrics written out in different colors, with the first line in brown, the next two lines in red and blue (first half red, second half blue), followed by a line in brown. First, I tried to get the students to feel comfortable with singing the chorus slowly, all in one order. (We spent just a little bit of time also talking about the word choice of "don't" versus "doesn't".) We then spent some time rehearsing the chorus in parts - with everyone singing the first line, and the having the class split the next two. The entire class then sang the last line of the bridge together. I had to get the students familiar with the separate parts before trying to sing the song at tempo since the split lines actually overlap, and in order to illustrate this, I simply had the students follow my visual cues as to when to start singing their separate parts. We rehearsed a few times, going faster each time, until we were close to tempo. Then, we tried singing the bridge to the music, with again me cueing the class as to when to start the bridge. (I started the music about a minute into the song.) The first attempt was pretty messy. The second attempt was a lot better, and I had the class try to sing along with the rest of the song ("Still Gotta Get Up..."). The end of the song ends with an exclamatory "Get Up!", which caught the attention of some students, and so when we tried the bridge a 3rd time, I had the students shout out "Get Up!" | |
| Agadu | Review, re-dance |
Agadu was pretty successful last week, and so I wanted to do it one more time, especially since I asked the students during the previous class what language the song was in. I simply started with some hand motions in order to get the students' attention, and then I started motioning the Agadu signs that I used during the previous week. As usual, I asked a few questions in order to get a feel of what the students remembered from the previous week. I had to remind the students again about some safety rules about movement, as some students during the walking portions still had a penchant of walking too far, or worse, crashing into things or people. We practiced Agadu once, and then I asked the students about the language again. Nobody was able to determine that the song was in Hebrew. We sang the song about halfway through before I motioned the students to march out of the room. | |
I'm pretty sure I did something else this day, but unfortunately my notes regarding doing unplanned things are a little scant. Oh well.
This was the first time the principal watched the class, as she stopped by to get something out of the room. She seemed quite pleased.
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