I knew I would have to spend a lot of time doing review since it had been 5 weeks since our previous class, and so I tried to do as much review as possible. This class also featured for the first time the regular teacher, and that (perhaps combined with the fact that we hadn't had music class for so long), the class was better behaved this time around.
| Hello World | Teach song w/ guitar |
Rather than start again with Hello My Friends Hello, I figured I lead off with the song that I used a lot last year as an intro song. As the students were entering the room and finding their seat, I was happily strumming my guitar for them in a variety of different chords. I received a number of oohs from students as they were focusing on my guitar. I had the students sing the song along with me; Hello World is a great echo song, and so it was an easy song to sing. I only sang the chorus, as then I stopped to talk about the guitar. | |
| Guitar Introduction | Talk about the guitar, and compare it to the ukulele |
After finishing the chrous of Hello World, we talked a bit about the guitar and how it was similar or different from the ukulele. Students picked out the obvious things (size, number of strings, construction, resonating hole/chamber), and that allowed me to talk about other musical concepts that we've covered before (sound wants space, longer = lower, etc.). I let the students strum the guitar strings once as I walked around the circle, and again we talked about how the metal strings felt a lot different than the plastic ukulele strings. After a few minutes of discussion, we sang again the chorus of Hello World. | |
| Well Enough Said… About That | Review the call and answer, practice a few times |
I first blurted out "Well Enough Said" and only one student responded, quite meekly. I then reviewed quickly the call and response, and practiced it once. In order to emphasize that I was expecting a good response, I asked the class what they were supposed to do if I sang "Well Enough Said" quietly. I then had them practice it quietly, which they did well. I then had the students follow me as I sang low, high, slow, quickliy, and whispery. The students found this to be a bit of a fun game. | |
| Hello My Friends | Review the song, add Mandarin to the mix |
I openly told the class that I wanted to see how much they remembered from five weeks ago, and so that pretense provided a very easy excuse to review Hello My Friends. I had prewritten English, French, and Swahili, and then I added Chinese underneath. We practiced singing in Chinese, and then I talked a bit about the sign that we'd be using to indicate that we're at the end or coda of the song (fist straight up in the air). I had the students attempt the coda while starting with the Chinese lyrics, and then bubbling up the language stack back up to English, and ending there. I don't know if the students really understood the coda of that particular song (and it'll grow as we add more languages), but no matter, I moved on. I interjected a "Well Enough Said" right here; the students nailed it. | |
| Do Re Mi | Review the notes up and down the scale, sing the song |
I had 7 chairs lined up at the front of the room, and so I started quickly reviewing the notes of the Solfege scale starting at Do. During this time, I had to remind students that going up the scale meant going up in pitch; likewise going down the scale should translate to a drop in pitch. By the time we got up to the top of the scale, we talked about the second Do and the octave. After going up and down the scale a few times, I jumped around the scale a bit, trying to get the students to sing Sol-Mi, followed by Sol-Mi-La-Sol-Mi. The students didn't really recognize those intervals. I had the students repeat the Do Re Mi song, one line at a time with me. By the time we went through the song, I then used paper representations of each note (similar to what I did with the other class previously), and we sang through the song again one more time. | |
| Rhythm Sticks | Pass out sticks, have students follow me |
I passed out first a single stick to Everybody Oughta Know (which to my pleasant surprise, many students knew, although they still will echo the 3rd line), and I had the students practice holding the stick properly while maintaining a small resonating chamber with their hand. I realized later on that getting them to make the chamber was of little value this early in their sticking experience, and it would have been better to just get the students sticking regardless of how well they were holding the sticks, even though we talked about resonating chambers and how sound needs space earlier in the day. I passed out a second stick to the same song, and then we practiced ready position (two sticks pointing up, sort of like a ready-to-eat, knife-and-fork position), and we then practiced sticking for a bit, to different beat combinations. I then spent a little time trying to stick to a 4-beat measure, and interjecting a rest or two at times. When the students seemed like they were ready, I had them stick to Raisins (which I also used with the other class previously). The song is actually so short that one cannot do too many different patterns, as it's better to make sure that the students have one pattern nailed down before moving to another. | |
I spent a little more than a half hour this time with this class, as I want to try to catch this class up with the other class.
I found myself starting a lot of songs higher than my voice preferred; I'm not sure why that was the case this time around, but it did require me to adjust my pitch/key signature in between song phrases more than once.
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