Teaching Notes, 20110126

Coming into today's class, I still had the two classes at different stages, but I was thrown a curveball today - a real fire drill, except that this time, it wasn't just a drill (although it turned out to be not a fire either), and it caused the cancellation of my 1st class. Now, that meant I had the opportunity to allow my 2nd class to catch up (and overtake) the 1st class in terms of topics covered.

We Shall Not Be Moved (Sweet Honey In The rock)	Lead class while listening to recording
Unlike Dan Zanes' version of the song, Sweet Honey In The Rock has a much more animated, more gospel-like recording of the song, and I wanted to expose the students to a different way to sing/perform a known song. (I was hoping that the students remembered the song that they enjoyed so much from the previous week.) I had the students listen to the song for about a minute, and after stopping the playback, I asked them if anyone recognized the song. A few did pick out "We Shall" out of the song (there's so much activity in the recording that it can be tough at times), and so I continued the playback while pointing to the prewritten lyrics. I also spent about a minute asking the students if they knew of songs that could be sung in different ways. The only example of that they came up with was actually Seasons, where instead of changing the music/rhythm/tempo, the words were changed. I couldn't think of common songs that the students would have known to be sung in different ways off the top of my head, so I moved on. (I should have just played some stuff off of my computer, which has some examples, including Over the Rainbow.)
Rhythm Practice	Practice clapping eighth notes
As a prelude to the next exercise, I wanted to get the students to become comfortable thinking in terms of offbeats, or at least in terms of eighth notes given quarters. I first had the students clap steadily with me. I then took a tambourine, and played it twice as fast, while I continued to clap (with my other hand - one hand clapping! :) ) and step at a slow and regular pace. I next asked the students to describe the differences between the tambourine and the clapping - and while some students talked about how I was playing something different, only about the 5th or 6th answer did someone note that I was going faster. How much faster was something that the students would figure out only after several more demonstrations. I then asked the students to pretend they were playing the tambourine, but without tambourines (there weren't enough for the class); they'd just tap their knees while they were seated. I then started up quarters, while trying to get the students to clap eighths. It took reminding the students to listen first before tapping, and it took several iterations before most of the class was able to do what I was hoping for - tapping eighths. Each time the students would just tap quarters with me, and slowly students would trickle in eighths. The class had a tendency to speed up, so I reminded them again to watch and listen for me, even though they were doing something slightly different. I then repeated, varying the speed of the quarters; I never got excessively fast, although I sort of wanted to do so just to see if they could do it.
Rhythm of Seasons	Write out/reverse-engineer Kodaly rhythms for lines of Seasons
This was arguably a bit of a stretch, but I wanted to see if the students could write out the rhythm for at least the first two lines of Seasons. Starting with the first line, I had the students clap 4 times and then say/sing the line while continuing to clap. I then asked them what syllables were being spoken when clapping. This took a lot longer for them to get correctly than I expected, and I had to have the students clap and sing a few times more. I then simply wrote out vertical lines for each syllable, but with the one on the offbeat ("is") with a different color, and I asked the students what we should do with that one - e.g. how to fit two notes in the space of one ta. With 1 ta, 2 ti's, and a set of tikitiki's written out on the side, students were able to choose the pair of ti's for the rhythm of that 3rd beat. I feel in retrospect that I didn't explain the concept of the time of 1 ta or 1 beat very well, and that really made things complicated as we moved to the next line. Getting the students to pick out the clapped syllables too a bit of an extra effort, and then I sectioned away each set of syllables into beats on the board. Choosing a rhythm for the 2nd and 4th beat ("falling") was easy, but then choosing a rhythm for the other two beats I realized was going to be way over their heads. One student did sort of go down the path of realizing that something had to be mixed up (from the list of ta/ti/tiki) in order to fit 3 syllables into one beat's worth of time, but they couldn't figure out how. I also asked a student to describe what syllables (e.g. in "hear the rain") was faster, and that student couldn't come up with the right answer. I'll have to figure out a better way to explain how to fill rhythms up in a different way. I've already got some ideas; check in next week. :) We ended this exercise by singing...
Seasons	Review, practice round, record/playback round
After a very quick review (e.g. "sing with me") I simply built on what I did last week, except this time, I had the students split into 4 groups! (The class was an even 24 kids today, which was nice.) I first cycled through the class, with each group just singing the first line. Then, we tried the ever-so-famous 4-way round. Not so good the first time - it seemed like the groups lost momentum after singing the first line, and so I had to remind them to keep singing (and in fact, I found myself reminding them after each iteration). I had the groups start in clockwise order with the group closest to me, and perhaps that made it harder for the 2nd and 3rd groups (which were in the back of the class) to keep going, and so perhaps next time I'll arrange the class a little differently. After several practices, we tried recording - which also led to a few students just blaring so that they could be heard. (One student even shouted something before the song started, which led to a quick bench alert and a seat outside the music room.) It took about 3 recordings before I think I had something that had an even volume throughout the song, even though it was kind of quiet. I also didn't have the laptop positioned ideally for recording, and so that could have led to a quiet recording. However, it was loud enough to allow the students to (1) hear each group starting, and (2) recognize that at any point in the song, someone's singing "Hey, ho...". I noticed that I've started giving a deliberate starting tone (high C) for the students for Seasons. I tried confirming this w/ the piano, and similar to other people who are old and have perfect pitch, I found myself just ever so slightly flat. Boo.
We Shall Not Be Moved	Review, sing again
I didn't have a lot of time, but I wanted to spend just a few minutes. Plus, the students were asking throughout the class to sing it again. (Yay!) After singing it once through, I asked the students again why I had the 1st and 3rd lines in red, and no one really could characterize what we did with those lines the last time. I wanted this time around to have the students respond during the 3rd line whatever I sang during the 1st line - sort of a delayed echo due to the static 2nd line; in order to illustrate this, I replaced the red words with just big orange circles, and that clicked in a bit better with the students. The students were able to pull off the delayed echo well. We sang it with a few of the same stanzas that we used the previous week, and I had the students line up to march out by singing as the last stanza "Line up everybody". It's always fun when I can incorporate a march-out-the-door exit while singing. Even after the song was done, I still heard students singing on their way back out to their regular classroom.

I still didn't get back to the Solfege scale, and I hope to do that next week with class #2, which should allow class #1 to catch up. My hope is that if the students remember notes, remember relative placement of pitches on a staff, and can write rhythms, that they'll be able to put it all together and start writing music - at least for songs that they definitely know. Sounds optimistic, eh?

I spent a little bit of time coming up with backpocket songs and other things to do for the next several weeks. The list was enormous, but it included Tuwe Tuwe (another potental round), Sarasponda, Big Rock Candy Mountain (Red Grammer's version), Wimoweh (also RG's version), Jenny Jenkins, Oh My Goodness (Sweet Honey), Still Gotta Get Up, and Hole in the Bottom of the Sea. Maybe I'll get to a few before the spring break.

Teaching Notes, 20110119

This is the first time I had to prepare different lesson plans for the two classes, since during the previous week I only had one class. That meant that last week's single class was now ahead, since I really wanted both classes to experience last week's material. No matter though, I figured I'd just take the 1st class a little easier this time around, and I'll try to go faster with the 2nd class (which is smaller anyway) and try to catch them up.

Similar to last week, I wanted to do a little review, something new, and something relevant to MLK.

We Shall Not Be Moved (class #1)	Lead class while singing the song
Maybe one day I'll learn to try to get the students into class and seated while singing a song successfully, but this wasn't the day. I sang through the chorus once (with ukelele in hand), and I realized that it was just easier to get everyone into class.
Teaching Peace (Red Grammer, class #2)	Lead class while singing the song
Similar to the opener for last week's class, I had teaching peace prewritten on the board, although by the time the students arrived, I had only 3 of the 4 lines of the chorus written, which made things a little awkward when I started teaching the song. However, the students seemed to respond reasonably well when taught the chorus. Similar to the previous week, the students struggled with trying to echo me during the stanza for only parts of the stanza, and I probably need to find a better way to illustrate this partial back-and-forth to the students.
Seasons (Winter version)	Review, lead class into rounds, record and play back
The review of the song for the first class went quickly, and so I quickly split the class and had one group of students start while the 2nd group started when the 1st group sang the last line. I then moved the 2nd group up to starting one line earlier, when the 1st group was singing the 3rd line. We did have to practice this a few times before I felt the class was recording-worthy. The recording went ok, although I seem to have always one or two students who trying to shout something just so that they can hear themselves. The 2nd class didn't see the winter version of Seasons, so I went through a exercise to re-introduce the song and examine the winter differences, similar to what I did the previous week with the first class. I then split the class and got half the class to start the song when the other half was singing the last line. I didn't try to get the 2nd half to start when the 1st half was at line 3.
We Shall Not Be Moved	Teach song, zipper in replacements for the 1st and 3rd lines
I spent a little bit of time reviewing the importance of MLK (something I wasn't able to do with the 2nd class last week), and then we dove right into the song. I chose the Dan Zanes version of this song, since it's a lot simpler than other recorded versions. (I didn't play a recording to the students; I just sang it and taught this particular version.) The song turned out to be enormously easy to sing, and the students really really enjoyed it. Perhaps it was something new and terribly easy to learn, which made it doubly appealing to them. I had prewritten the song lyrics on the board, with the 1st and 3rd lines in red, and so I then told the class to expect something different for those red lines. Again, Dan Zanes' version of the song provides some very lightweight lyrics ("When we sing together", "when we work together", "on the road to freedom") compared to other versions. One of the best things for a music teacher to hear is to have the students ask to sing something they had just learned from scratch again - and We Shall Not Be Moved was one of them. None of the students in either class knew the song, and they really had a good time with it, even if it had no movement. I really got a thrill teaching it.

While I spent time reviewing the Solfege scale last week, I didn't do that with class #2, and so perhaps I'll try to squeeze that in next week. I also wanted to explore trying to recreate the rhythm of the songs with the classes, and I didn't do that, so perhaps that will also be left for next week.

Teaching Notes, 20110112

Happy new year, everyone! The school didn't restart classes until the week of 1/10, which allowed me (I think!) to recover a little more before the next bunch of classes. (I have 11 straight weeks without interruption, it appears, until the next intersession break.)

I wanted to do a lot of review, but at the same time, the following Monday was MLK day. Thus, I wanted to sneak in at least something that was germane to the holiday, especially after having been so light regarding holiday music in December.

I did have a bit of a curveball this time around; this week also featured some classes undergoing experimental changes in curriculum along with some extra training for teachers, and one of those experiments involved my second class of students. As a result, I only taught one class (the larger one).

Teaching Peace (Red Grammer)	Lead class while singing, teach chorus, immerse 1st stanza
With guitar in hand, I led the students into the classroom, but after only about half of the chorus, I found it rather difficult to direct the students where to sit (despite having ropes out in the usual stadium configuration) and play guitar at the same time. Thus, I stopped playing guitar for the 2nd half of the chorus, and after finishing it up, I quickly whisked in the rest of the class. I then asked the class to echo me as I sang the chorus again with the guitar. It went reasonably well, with students repeating me with acceptable volume. I did notice that could not split up the last line of the chorus ("we are teaching peace/with what we do and what we say") and still keep a regular 4-beat echo, but the students managed anyway with the imbalanced echo. To help me, I had the chorus prewritten on the board. I then tried to have the students echo the first two responses of the stanza but not the 3rd (this is similar to how Red Grammer presented the song during last year's winter MFM concert), and that really didn't go terribly well. Students kept wanting to echo that longer 3rd line, and it got a bit messy. Again, I had to stop playing guitar and gesture to the students when I wanted them to sing. I ended this exercise with another run through the chorus, which went expectably more smoothly this time.
Scale/note review	Review the Solfege scale
I wanted to do a quick review of the scale. Using a one chair over another (to represent a really big chair), I stood behind it and sang "Do" around middle C. I then put a large chair to my left, and sang "Mi", followed by another middle-sized chair to my left, to which I sang "Mi". I then asked the students if notes were missing, and of course the students responded (and some sang in chaos). I then invited a student to stand to the (my) left of each chair, representing "Re", "Fa", and "La". I then asked the students if we were done - and after their correct answers, I added another chair representing "Ti". I then proceeded to walk to the left of that chair to represent a high "Do". I walked up and down the scale with the students a few times. I then took the opportunity to review a few other scale-oriented concepts, such as the octave, the fact that there were two Dos, 8 notes in an octave (including the Dos), and the fact that one Do was a chair while the other was a space (or person). I also tried to have the students get used to singing the octave interval, which was a bit of fun for them.
Seasons	Introduce the winter version of the song, try to do some rounds
I had prewritten the winter version of Seasons, but initially with "see the rain falling" twice as the second stanza, and with "blustery" written in full. Rather than teach via echo, I simply sang the song and then asked the students if they remembered the song. Surprisingly, some students sort of remembered it, but couldn't quite explain why. Eventually I had some students remember the Fall version of the song. I then changed the song a bit - replacing the second "see the rain" with "hear the rain" (via asking "how else do you know it's raining outside?"), and then I replaced "blustery" with "blust'ry" to make the rhythm a little easier. I wanted to do this (rather than start out with the song already modified) so that the students would become comfortable with their own lyrics for familiar tunes. I then tried to do the song by round. I had written the lines such that the 1st and 4th lines (which are identical) were black, and the middle two lines were two different (other) colors. I first had one side of the class sing, and then after they finished, I had the other class sing while keeping the same tempo. Easy. I then had the students repeat the exercise, but I had the 2nd group start when the 1st group was starting the 4th line, so that everyone was singing the same line at the same time. Still reasonably easy. I then switched which group was starting, which got a little confusing, since I had called the groups "group 1" and "group 2"; I should have used sides or colors instead. Whoops. But, we were still able to pull off the pseudo-round, even though a few students in the starting group kept singing along. A few students actually thought were were supposed to restart singing when the other group reached the 4th line. That was pretty cool, since I gave no such instructions to actually continue the song in round. Finally, I did have the later group of students come in when the early students were singing the 3rd line. That sort of worked, although I don't know if the students understood why we did that. Unfortunately, we ran out of time, as I wanted to spend a little bit of time with the next song, and so I had promised the students that we'd try to record the next time.
Lift Every Voice	Teach last 2 lines of the 1st stanza, play song for the students
Before introducing the song, we had talked a little bit about why there was no school the following Monday, and the significance of MLK and his work. I then tried to teach (quickly) the last two lines of the 1st stanza ("Facing the rising sun of our new day begun/let us march on 'til victory is won") - I went through it a few times, and then I played a recording of the first stanza. Lift Every Voice was intended to be a very slow but powerful song, but for small children, the lack of speed makes it a bit of a stodgy song, especially when the lyrics don't quite click in. I had taken the recording and sped it up to about 67 beats per second, so that the 1st stanza fits in about 1 minute. When the singers reached the last two lines, I tried to get the students to sing with it. It didn't work quite as well, but I think the style of the music was so different compared to what they've listened to that the students seem intrigued.

That actually was a pretty good way to start the year, I thought - some review, some new stuff, and something germane to the holiday/calendar. The students also seemed reasonably focused - more than usual, which was a plus. (There were still some chattiness among the students, but less than past classes.) Now that the larger class is arguably one class ahead of the other class, I may try to take some liberties with this class in the following weeks and review more things that weren't covered quite as effectively the first time around.

Backpocket? Well, I certainly had a lot at the end of last year; this time, I was ready to jump in with Sarasponda and Tuwe Tuwe (another round).