Teaching Notes, 20110223

Ok, I admit it, I didn't really have strict musical goals here; I just wanted to review old stuff and teach cool stuff. :) Well, perhaps I did wnt to try to get some more rhythm theory in.

Hello World	Have kids sing the song upon entry, teach 2nd stanza
I originally planned on having the students walk in and sing at the same time. However, I found that it was just simpler to lead them into class and then sing, while I strummed a few things on the guitar. In past classes, I sort of zigzagged the students into the stadium seating arrangement; this time, I led the students as far as I could into the classroom, across the front of the room, and then I sort of circled around the back; effectively, I walked a 3 parts of a rectangle. It almost worked for the first (and larger) class, and for the second class it worked quite well. I also realized that the 2nd class can all fit on 3 lines instead of 4, and so I'll have to remember to arrange the kids in 3 sections instead. I then proceeded to sing Hello World, and in both classes, a number of students started singing with me instead of echoing me, which was perfectly fine as far as I was concerned. When the song got to the 1st stanza, I slowed down thinking that the students wouldn't remember it very well, but to my surprise, they indeed did remember the words, and sang along without missing much of a beat. After another iteration of the chorus, I then pointed to the board where I wrote the 2nd stanza, and the students were able to manage reading the somewhat less familiar words while singing. Yay!
Seasons	Review, change lyrics
I wanted to get through a quick iteration of Seasons, mainly because at some point later I'm going to try to do the round again. But, as an excuse, I talked about how it was possibly going to snow in San Mateo (really!), and so we changed the 2nd line to "see the snow falling", twice. I also took the (unplanned) opportunity to introduce the repeat symbol to the students; to help them remember, I pointed out that two lines + two dots = two times. Anyhow, we sang the song twice through quickly with the new lyrics.
Rhythm Exercises	Get students to build their own rhythms
I was still looking for a way to get students to think about rhythms and keeping in time, and so I introduced a bit of a point system. I first drew out 4 quarter notes, and we reviewed how the four represented a measure. We also very quickly reviewed 8th and 16th notes. I then gave each note type a point value: 4 for quarter notes, 2 for eighth notes, and 1 for sixteenth notes. (I didn't use the numeric terms in class so much; I kept referring to the notes as ta/ti/tiki when I remembered to do so.) We then started replacing each of the beats with something that was also 4 points - e.g. two ti's, a set of 4 tiki's, etc. At some point, someone asked about putting in only one or two tiki's, and then we started getting into the math of it all - e.g. how to fill the remaining points. Ultimately, we ended up with a beat featuring an eighth and two sixteenths, which also allowed me to introduce the "flagged" eighth and sixteenth solitary notes - something that hopefully gets the classes closer to reading real notes on a staff. The "flag" moniker worked very well - I convinced them that in order to have a solitary eighth or sixteenth, one had to pull a note from its set, and that broke the top bar(s) and left a flag. Every time we modified one of the 4 beats, we spoke the rhythm and then we all clapped the rhythm. I think the maximum consecutive sixteenth notes the class can sustain was 6, and so a few times I had to rearrange the rhythm just a little bit so that the kids weren't clapping in mud. In all, I thought this was more effective than my past attempts to get students to recognize and work with rhythms on the board.
Tuwe Tuwe	Introduce song
I didn't get to cover Tuwe Tuwe for the first class, so I decided to cover the song again for both classes. For the first class, I had to start from scratch, and while I was able to get through the entire song, I certainly have to review the song several more times before I can achieve a quorum of familiarity with it. For the 2nd class, reviewing took a lot longer than I had expected, and while I got to add clapping to the song, I didn't feel like the students still had good command of the song. I did play for them the Sweet Honey in the Rock recording, with the clapping, which inspired a few students.

I had the students exit to a singing of We Shall Not Be Moved. I feel that I definitely have some good areas for the students to grow, particularly rhythms and Tuwe Tuwe. I do hope I can evolve the rhythm writings into musical notewriting.