Teaching Notes, 20120112

I am super excited - not only is it the start of a new calendar year, and not only have I been away from teaching for 3 weeks, I get to use the same lesson plan for both classes!

Today is also the only class before MLK Day, so I knew I had to do some activity that marked the holiday. I also wanted to accelerate the class towards some form of music literacy, and so I had laid out 5 long black ropes representing a staff in the middle of the room. Here's what happened…

Trisch Trasck Polka	Lead class with the song in the background
The school is going through a capital improvement program, and so construction fences consume much of the space outside the door leading to the music room. Thus, I wanted to get the kids into the room as quickly as I could, and so I led the students with the song in the background. I asked the students to copy whatever the person was doing, and so I started moving to the music in different ways as I led the students in. I normally don't do this with 3rd graders, as most find dancing like this a bit silly, and unsurprisingly, students did more snickering than dancing, although they did keep walking. Plus, the music room, because of the construction and shuffling of school furniture, is more cluttered now than before, leaving less room for moving in a circle. And so, I had to stop the music before it ended, and before the students started to blow up the staff that I had laid out. After the music started, we did talk just a little about the music, and some students remarked that they had heard the music in cartoons. It's a little unfortunate that cartoons would be the only supply of classical music to students' ears these days, but I guess that also the case for a lot of my friends when I was a small kid.
Life Sized Staff	Introduce staff, where notes go, and introduce the lettered scale
With the five black lines on the ground, we talked about how music writers need lines, just like if one were writing an essay on lined paper. After talking about how note go on either spaces or lines, I asked the students which way was up. Of course, half of the class felt that the other side of the class was upside-down or facing the wrong way, and so that allowed me to point out that there had to be a system to tell which way was up: the positioning of the clef symbol. I had a pre-drawn giant clef on a sheet of presentation paper which I then unrolled and laid on the ground. I mentioned that the center of the clef's little circle was supposed to go around the 2nd string, whose name was "G"; I told the class that if they had to remember where the clef went, all they'd have to ask themselves was, "G, where does the clef go?" (That was a silly trick from Chris Burke - thanks, Chris!) With clef in place, we then started walking up the scale in solfege, starting with an arbitrary Do at E. I then put a student at the E, and then proceeded to add 4 more students for the next 4 notes going up the scale. When each student stood on the staff, I had the rest of the class tell me what the next note was. (Amusingly, I managed to pick all kids whose name started with M during the 1st class.) Keeping the Do student on the staff and letting the rest sit down again, I proceeded to walk up the scale (with the class reciting the notes as I walked) until I got up to the upper Do, and at that point, I made sure the students noticed that consecutive Dos, or any octave, meant that one note was in a space and one note was in a line. Next, I asked the class if people sang more than the 11 notes (5 lines, 6 spaces including the ones immediately below and above the staff) that a staff offered. Clearly, the answer was no, and so I informed the class that if you needed to go off staff, then you had to bring your own lines with you. Also predrawn on large presentation paper was a giant whole note with a line through it, and I brought that out to illustrate the first line note above, and then below the staff. having the class tell me the upper note was easy. It was harder for the class to tell me the name of the note when I put it under the staff, under the starting Do pitch at E. I then had the students look up at the board; I wasn't done with the staff yet, however. I drew a staff on the board, and on it, I put a stemless note in the horizontal middle, vertically in line with the clef's little circle: G. I told the students to call this note "G". I then had the students walk down the scale as I drew notes to the left of G, going down until we went down to C. I then tried to convince the students that that C was actually really special: middle C, which is particularly special on a piano. (I marked middle C on the music room's piano keys with blue painter's tape.) I mentioned that a lot of people like to equate C with Do, which is more out of convenience and habit, rather than any real reasoning, but I also noted in the 2nd class that the teacher tended to do the same, especially when we sang Do-Re-Mi. Going back to the board, I walked the students up the scale again using C as Do, and I wrote in the remaining La, Ti, Do at the top of the scale. I then asked how many different note names there were, and the class answered correctly 7. I pointed out the two Do's on the scale, and noted that both were in fact also C. Working backwards from the upper C, we filled in two more letter note names: B and A. At this point, I asked them how many different letters they saw (7 again), and at that point, I pointed out that in music, we only had 7 letters, just like the Solfege scale. I got some satisfying oooohs at that point.
How Do You Dootee	Introduce Tone Bells, play JB
I quickly removed the ropes, and I asked the students if anyone went anywhere during the break. Some students started talking about Tahoe and other parts of California. I then asked if anyone went overseas. (One student said that he went to Tonga!) I then talked about Australia (one of my favorite places to visit), and how people from Australia spoke English, but differently than we did. I proceeded to go through the verses of HDYD, one at a time, and when we came across the 2nd verse ("… or have you shifted away"), we talked about what that phrase might mean. (The students figured it out quickly.) I had the students chant it in echo twice through, and then I had them try to chant it with me twice, the second time a little faster than the first. Next, it was time to introduce the task of finding a new place in the circle during the 4th verse. After reminding the students not to run or make contact with others, even if it means finding new places near their current ones around the circle, we all recited the chant much more slowly, to allow the students more time to find a spot during that last verse. We were able to do this about 4 or 5 times, each time getting faster, before it started getting too chaotic (and therefore time to move on). This was very similar to how I've introduced How Do You Dootee, and it always is a lot of fun.
We Shall Not Be Moved	Teach song, zipper into it
With MLK Day the following Monday, and with a field trip consuming next week's class time, this was really my only chance to do something that was MLK-relevant close to the holiday. I used this song last year, and it was one of the more popular tunes that year, and so it was a no-brainer to bring it back for this year. I spent a little bit of time talking about MLK, what his goals were, and the struggles that he and his consitutents faced. I also talked about the freedom bus rides, to which the song (that I was about to introduce) was relevant. After trying to describe what it would have been like sitting on a bus with a lot of angry people trying to move you away, I simply started singing We Shall Not Be Moved (in Dan Zanes' style) with my ukulele. After singing a few verses, I asked the students about the good things that they did, and I simply zippered them into the 1st and 3rd lines of the song. I then encouraged the students to fill in with the rest of the song. For my first class, I tried to teach the song entirely by rote, and it was actually pretty difficult to get the students to sing with me; they barely got past the echo stage. And so, for my second class, I prewrote the lyrics on the board, which was astoundingly more effective at teaching the song, thus freeing students' brains to zipper away. I'm debating about bringing the song back during the next class (in two weeks), when MLK Day might still be fresh in the kids' minds.

I had prewritten on the board the winter lyrics to Seasons (California version - substituting rain for snow). At this point, I had run out of time to really do another activity that took significant time, but I did have the students read aloud in unison the lyrics. Some, by the 3rd line, starting singing the song, but clearly everyone found the lyrics to be familiar. I then asked the class what was wrong with the lyrics, and eventually someone noted that it wasn't raining outside, and indeed, it hadn't rained for about a month. Knowing that a large storm was on its way (and that I had had two weeks until the next class), I promised the class that it would indeed rain before the next time that I saw them. None believed me.

I had also in my back pocket the Austrian Yodeler, which I'll save for next week.