| March of the Toy Soldiers (Nutcracker) | Lead class listening to music, have students move to the music |
| Before I led the students in, I asked the students to show me how they'd move to the music. "Show me, don't tell me" I asked. That wasn't terribly successful; many of the students recognized the music, and as we walked in, there was still a lot of chatter. A few would move a little bit, but not a whole lot. After the students were in, I then played the three patterns of the song, and then asked a student to illustrate how he or she would move to that part of the song. | |
| Music Forms | Have students recognize the patterns to the March of the Toy Soldiers, and to Hello World |
The March of the Toy Soldiers has 3 different patterns to them, and I had pre-cut the three parts (each about 13 seconds) and played each back. I then had students try to describe the parts. The first one (which starts the song) was described as "high". The second one was described initially as "lower". I then played the third pattern, which was also described as "high", which allowed me to explain to the students that oftentimes "high" and "low" aren't enough. The students then added that the first pattern was "happy" or "stepping" or "marching", the second pattern was more stern or serious, and the third pattern was fast and sounded like someone was frightened or running away. I chose one of the students who provided descriptions and named the pattern after them. Using the students' first initial, I then replayed the entire song, while asking the students what pattern they were hearing. The pattern on paper is AABAACAABAA, but for the kids' sake, it was reduced to ABACABA. That still is not usually the first form that one sees when extracting forms from a song. I then spent a little time ad-hoc reviewing Hello World, and I had the students try to deduce the pattern of the song. To my delight, there were several students who remembered both the chorus and the first stanza, and when I wanted to show how the stanza pattern showed up again, a few were able to remember the words to the second stanza too! I told the children that Hello World's ABABA is more typical of kids music. | |
| Drumming, rhythms | Continue working on rhythms, try to get in more instruments |
Similar to the previous week, I first had the students try to follow clapping 4 beats, and then we worked through the same concepts with 4 steady beats as before - 4 beats in a measure, 4 ta's, 4 quarter notes, etc. I then moved onto eighth notes, and talked about the speed between eighth notes and quarter notes. Finally, we reviewed the sixteenth notes and the mathy relationship between sixteenth notes, eighth notes, and quarter notes. This week, the large Chinese drums to be used for the school's entry in the 2011 Chinese New Year Parade had arrived, and so I had a student come up and play the 1st beat of each measure while everyone else kept beat clapping. I then had the students delete the first beat (i.e. the drummer had a 1-beat solo) while everyone else kept clapping the latter 3 beats. It actually took a bit of effort on my part to keep the drummer hitting consistently on the first beat, and I had to employ a combination of gestures + counting. I then had a second drummer come up, which, similar to last week, meant that the drummers had to pay attention to each other in order to sound like one drum. I really did want to get in the other instruments, but I never got the chance. | |
I had a few other things in my back pocket this week, including potentially the Longer the Faster, which the students have been asking for.
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