Teaching Notes, 20110601

I had to cancel the previous class because of an unplanned pediatric appointment, although I was able finally to get time with the tone bells. This day, it was also raining (very rare in June), and so I had to lead the students into the class quickly. I had the students sit in a squarish circle this time around.

Everybody Oughta Know	Lead students into class while singing
This seems to work well to have the students sing and walk at the same time. I got the class into the room with 3 iterations of the song.
How do You Dootee	Teach Chant, get class to move around to the chant
This was a chant that I learned from the Sanna Longden NCAKE workshop from last year. I taught the chant line by line, and after each line, we talked about what we were saying (e.g. "what area of the world is this from?", "what does 'shifting away' mean?"). Some students giggled at the chant (which admittedly does sound a bit silly), while some students enjoyed trying to talk with an Australian/English accent. After getting the chant mostly down, I then instructed the students to go find another part of the circle. The constraints were that they had to find that place in the duration of the last line, but they could not crash. Needless to say, the students had trouble meeting both criteria, but they were still having fun while doing it. I think in both classes I was able to restart the chant without delay only once. After I had the students stop and sit down, I asked them what worked and didn't work, and that provided some good conclusions about (1) going slow with the chant, and (2) ways to avoid collisions. It's moments like this when I do wish I had a large map of the world. I'll have to get one for next year.
Tone Bells	Have students play bells in chords, accompany song
Finally, I had time to have the students play bells. I started with a single student and I had the student practice playing while being cued by me. I found that a visual cue (like a hand passing a second hand) didn't work very well, and so I resorted to a verbal cue (hit, 2, 3, 4). I then brought two more students up, and we practiced as a group; the students' bells' tones formed a C chord (another term I introduced to the class). I then proceeded to bring up and practice with two more sets of three students - one forming a G chord, and one forming an F chord. I had the C chord group remain the middle group Next, I tried to get the groups of three to play on demand with me pointing. I kept the same beat/rhythm (e.g. playing on 1), to make things simpler. When the groups seemed to play together relatively well, I then turned to the students and asked them to follow me in song. I didn't tell them what the song was going to be; I just started singing the chorus to Teaching Peace while pointing to the appropriate bell group (most of the time). I found that it was hard to keep just playing on 1, particularly near the end of the chorus, so I started pointing on both 1 and 3, which I think tripped up the groups a little bit, but they recovered. We sang and played Teaching Peace once more before I switched the song on them and sang the Rattlin' Bog chorus. One thing I realized was that it was difficult for me to direct the singers and the bell players; each group of students faced each other, which meant that I had to keep turning around in order to direct both groups. Perhaps it would have been more effective to have the bell players facing in the same direction as the rest of the class, as the singers didn't really need to see the bell players.
Piano	Introduce the Piano
Last week, even though I didn't hold a music class, we had a roving MfM docent come by and do a presentation about various instruments for my students and older students in the school. The roving docent, near the end of his presentation, talked about how the piano was a combination of a "bang" (or percussive) instrument, combined with a "twang" (string) instrument, and I wanted to demonstrate this to the student. Plus, in the music room, there had been a piano mostly all year, pretty much unused, and it was overdue to show the piano to the student. I could not remove the board underneath the keyboard to reveal the large harp-array of strings, and so I had to open the top of the upright to show the students the action of the hammers and strings. And so, as students were marching out, I had them come by the piano and look from atop to see what was going on. I played The Rattlin' Can on the piano as they walked by and observed.

Yay, I finally got to the bells. I only have one class left with the students, and so I'll likely make that class a review of all of the really successful songs and activities.

Teaching Notes, 20110518

This week, I really wanted to try Tuwe Tuwe one last time and see if would stick with the students. At the same time, I did want to revisit the tone bells, but I also had a new song ready for them that I thought might be a nice departure from the planned aspects of a music class.

Tuwe Tuwe	Lead students into class while singing, attempt staggered parts
This time, I sort of forced the issue of bringing students in while singing (or not singing), and Tuwe Tuwe, being so short, I figured, would be doable. While many students obliged by singing, students felt more comfortable doing a line by line echo than singing with me, which made the middle verses ("A brofra ba…") difficult to repeat due to their lengths. After the students had all entered the class, I had to spend some time reviewing the song to make sure that they could sing it well. In retrospect, I should have ended right there rather than attempt the next thing I tried… recording and re-recording! I first recorded the students sing Tuwe Tuwe, with a silent count. (Getting the silent count wasn't too difficult for the students, and it really allowed me to capture the attention of the students.) Recording was easy (despite the substandard microphone that I have), but it turned out that playback at the right volume was very difficult! My goal here was to have the students sing while being accompanied by their own recording. However, the students would start two bars behind the recording. I tried recording each class more than once,and I didn't get a good balance of the playback recording and the new voices; usually the second voice would drown out the first. Part of the reason may be the distance between the sound source/boombox and the placement of the microphone. Plus, the addition of the second voice seems to max out the amplitude of the recording, and as a result the recording gets a little clipped. A couple of ideas for the next time I try this - record the original recording for more than 1 iteration. That way the students when singing the second recording can hear the overlap for longer. The other thing that I might try is to record the song for more than iteration and then use Audacity to overlay voices in a staggered form. This eliminates the need to record a second time, but it does require some quick work on the laptop in the middle of class, and that might lead to some fidgeting by the students.
Tone Bells	Revisit the tone bells
Tuwe Tuwe took a lot longer to do, and so I had only a few moments to work with the tone bells with the students. I ended up showing them the full set of tone bells, with which we talked about things like the Do-Re-Mi scale (using C->C), and octaves. People asked about the black tone bells, and so that gave me the opportunity to talk about "the notes in-between"; for the second class, I even had the class vocalize an ascending "whoop", and I asked them how many notes did they sing.
The Rattlin' Can (Key Wilde and Mr. Clarke)	Teach song w/ props
A few weeks ago, I purchased a new car with sattelite radio, and one of the stations is a kids' music station. Naturally, I've been using it for ideas, and one of the songs that I've fished out of the playlist is "The Rattlin' Can", which is a variation of the Rattlin' Bog, however, using things that are a little easier to visualize: a can, a box, a bag, a bottle, some juice, some bubbles, etc. I brought in a blank paint can purchased from the local Kelly Moore store, put inside a small cardboard box (which I had to construct a bit), and inside that, I put in a red newspaper bag holding a small 6-oz bottle of juice. This was a very instrumental (no pun intended) prop in getting the students to sing the right things. I first had the students practice the chorus a few times; naturally, they didn't know what the full song was going to sound like, so the students were lukewarm in singing at this point. I then introduced the can to the class, and I started singing the first stanza, followed by the chorus. Some students tried to echo, but I didn't really give them the time. (I also didn't have the time for them to echo.) Opening the can, I took out the box (to a lot of ooohs), and then I sang about the box, and the box in the can, followed by the chorus. By the time I got to the bag, many of the students got used to the cascading lead-in to the chorus. I had also placed the box and can onto chairs facing the students to help them remember what was inside. This proceeded with the bottle, juice, and bubbles (I shook the juice so that students could see bubbles inside), and by this time, the students got the cascading chorus that all I had to do was point to the object and sing only bits of the cascade. The song actually goes as far as breaking down the bubbles into atoms, protons and quarks, but I didn't really go that far. Instead, when it was time to break the bubbles down, I simply asked the class what the bubbles were made of, and we used "air" or "oxygen", which worked perfectly well. This song was a wild hit.

Like last week, I really wanted to do more with the bells, and so I'll have to make a concerted effort to work with them in the next class. I did, just in case, have the Hole in the Bottom of the Sea (Red Grammer, another cascading song), along with Epo I Tai Tai E if necessary, and How Do You Dootee.

Teaching Notes, 20110511

For this week, I wanted to revisit Seasons in round, and so I had the students back in the familiar stadium seating

Teaching Peace	Sing as students walk in, go right into a stanza, unprompted
Well, again I had sort of planned to have students sing while walking in, but again the students weren't really focused enough to pull it off, so I had them walk in before I started them on the song. I accidentally in both cases sang the 2nd stanza instead of the first, which made for a shorter song. However, the students in both classes didn't quite remember how to pull off the partial echo for Teaching Peace, so I had to quickly review that. But, anyhow, we were able to get through the song.
Seasons (spring)	Teach the song, then record in rounds
I had the lyrics written on the board, and the students were able to sing it very quickly, as they remembered the lyrics from the previous two versions. I then prepped the students for rounding the song by having the students, split in four groups, sing just the first line. I found out, however, particularly for the 2nd class (of just 3rd graders) that it was hard for the students to go from that to singing the entire song, and so the value of just practicing that first line isn't all that great, especially if you over-repeat that exercise. Eventually, I did have both classes record round attempts, and it was a little difficult to get the volumes of each group consistent on the recordings. The microphone on my laptop isn't all that strong, and while I tried attaching an external microphone, I couldn't position it somewhere where I could record all 4 groups well. Typically one of the 4 groups dominated on volume, and it was difficult for groups to maintain momentum past the first line.
Tuwe Tuwe	Reteach song
The students hadn't really gotten a good grasp of Tuwe Tuwe from the previous attempts during the year. I had the students sort get comfortable with the song, enough so that in the 2nd class, I pulled a few students just to sing "tuwe tuwe, barima tuwe tuwe" repeatedly in ostinato. The teacher was happy to help lead that effort, which was very helpful. However, I don't think the students are really getting a huge amount out of the song, which is a bit of a disappointment given the success I've had in previous years.
Epo I Tai Tai E	Try a few different patterns
For the last few minutes, I stood up on a chair and tried Epo I Tai Tai E with a patterns that were different from the previous week. The 1st class was able to pick out the patterns quickly, but the second class had troubles trying to pick up the pattern, and even remember the exercise that was done the previous week.

I'm writing this almost a month after the class took place, and so I don't have all of the gritty details like I usually do. Backpocket items included How Do You Dootee, and a re-run of Oh My Goodness, Look At This Mess.

I was pretty happy with this second stint in the gym, and perhaps I can squeeze in one last class in the gym. I did want to try Thady You Gander and the Irish Jig once again, not to mention How Do You Dootee.