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).
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