Teaching Notes, 3rd grade, 20110929 (1st class)

For a while, I wasn't quite sure if I was going to be teaching class for this week. Originally I had planned on teaching this class around 1:05pm, give or take a few minutes, but no children showed up until 1:30pm; apparently, the teacher thought that classes started at that time. Fortunately, I was still prepared to go through my original lesson plan with the students.

I'm still trying to catch this class up with the other 3rd grade class, and so a lot of the material here was similar to last week's material for the second 3rd grade class.

Hello My Friends Hello	Lead students into the room in song, in different languages
The students this time were accompanied by the principal, who was filling in for the regular teacher. Now, this time, the students walked in in a pretty orderly fashion. I had the ropes laid out in a 3/4 circle, and while they were marching in, I sang Hello My Friends in English. I then moved to French (which we had covered during the previous class). I had the lyrics written pre-written on the board, and then I wrote "Jambo, Watoto", and asked the students what they thought it meant. We then tried singing Jambo Watoto, Jambo.
Ukulele Introduction	Introduce the ukulele
It was this class' turn to be introduced to the Uke. This time, I did allow each student to strum lightly the ukulele, and after I had gone around the classroom, we talked about how the instrument felt when it was played. We also spent a little bit of time talking about the function of the hole/resonating chamber, and how sound needs space.
Jambo (Red Grammer)	Sing/teach song via immersion
This song worked well with the second class last week, and save for a bit of a hiccup when I was hunting for the initial starting tones, I was able to lead the students to sing the song. Similar to the previous week's experience, I also took the time to teach them to look for a sign that the song was ending; at that time, the students were asked to sing "Jambo Sanna" three times, followed by "Jambo". The students did a pretty good job with the song. It helps that the song is entirely an echo song without long phrases for the students to copy.
Do Re Mi	Introduce the notes to the students
This was an activity that I had done with the other class two weeks ago; I had chairs laid out in a line, and standing behind the first one, I sang "Do" and showed them the sign. After many repetitions, I started working up the line, moving to my left (the students' right) as I went up the scale. The students sang, but struggled a little with the hand signs; they didn't quite make the association with sign and note, and in a few instances, I also had to recapture the students' pitch so that they sang with me. I went as high as La, although I didn't try to jump notes this time around. Eventually by the end of the exercise, I tried to jump around with only signing (no singing) each note, and I think I lost half the class pretty quickly.
The Longer The Faster	Play the exercise
I've now done this exercise with 5 or 6 different classes over the years, and it's always a fun one. I spent a decent amount of time explaining the rules and having the children practice, and the students had a very good time with it. The principal filling in for the teacher even jumped in and participated in the fun. Yay! After the exercise was complete, I was able to discuss with the class the nuances of the exercise, particularly what was making the exercise more and more difficult as it went on. The discussion provided a little bit of a downtime for the students, too.

I'm writing this blog a few weeks after the class happened, so my memory isn't so great about what happened next. I thought I had done something off the cuff, but I don't recall what that was, and I didn't exactly have a lot of time.

I of course eventually taught the other class afterwards, so this 3rd grade class continues to be about one session behind. But I'll try to accelerate the classes a bit when we resume after the intersession break; during those times, I also can extend the class beyond 30 minutes to about 45 if I have to.