What surprised me, however, was that again, there was another substitute teacher for the class. You know it's going to be a challenge when the teacher opens the door and asks "are you ready for this?"
| Hello My Friends Hello | Lead students into the room in song |
Again, I wasn't able to lead the students in, and I made the mistake of leaving the nametags near the front of the room, where some of the kids swarmed. So, I had the students find their own way around the outside of the circle, which meant that children clumped around their familiar friends, leading to a lot more chatter. I started singing the song, and I quickly realized that the students were only going to echo me. And so, we spent more time reviewing the rather short song. ust like last week, I had pre-written "Hello, my friends" on the board, and then I wrote "Bonjour" underneath it. After teaching students how to say it, and asking them to guess what language it was, I then wrote "mes amis" next to "Bonjour" and ask the students to guess what it meant (which they did quickly). We then sang "Bonjour, mes amis" twice. Just like last week with the 2nd class, I noted to the students that they knew 3 or 4 different languages now, if you threw in Mandarin and Spanish. | |
| Rhythm Names | Repeat students' names with body percussion, and repeat |
This was the same exercise I did with the second class during the first week, where we adding body movements matching the rhythm of each name. We'd string up to 4 names together. This didn't work as well as it did for the second class two weeks ago; students weren't as interested, and I couldn't get a strong majority of the class to follow at any one time. Even at the end when I sped up the pattern, there still weren't a lot of students following. Plus, there were far more distractions this time versus two weeks ago, and that slowed the exercise so much that I burned nearly 20 minutes trying to get through the entire class (approximately 22 students). Last week, I very quickly taught "Well Enough Said", and I don't think many of the students remembered. I sang the phrase, and hardly anyone responded. So, I spent a minute or two reteaching the response, and I practiced the response a few times during the rest of the class. | |
| Everybody Oughta Know | Teach song, zipper away |
I taught the song and was, with some effort, was able to get the students to echo only the 1st, 2nd and 4th lines. The students showed increased interest in the song after I asked about the students' days and an example of something good that happened to them. I was amused that one student offered music class as something good that happened that day. Anyhow, I think at least got the song to a point where I could use it later in the year. | |
So, this class was probably a little more successful, only in the sense that I was able to teach Everybody reasonably well. But, another week without the regular teacher is really making this quite a challenge. The day was also quite warm, and as the students were coming right out of lunchtime, I think they were definitely tired. Even when I tried "Well Enough Said", I received little response. I had to send another student to the office (the same student from the previous week), and that was a disappointment.
I have some catch-up to do in order to get this class in line with the other classes. After September, after I stop teaching Kindergarten classes, I'll likely expand this class to 45 minutes in order to get more material in. Next week, I'll introduce Do-Re-Mi, and Longer the Faster, two things that went well with the second class.
The one thing that did work very well was to bring a box for students to leave their lunch items. I left the box at the front of the room, and the items provided no additional distractions.
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