Teaching Notes, 20120223

It's my 100th post!

After two weeks outside, it was time to have class fully in the room again, and get the students ever so closer to music literacy.

Teaching Peace	Teach song, and first stanza
After the students were seated, I sang through the chorus once with a guitar, and then I had the students echo my singing of the chorus one line at a time. I asked the students what part of the song keeps showing over and over again, and a few students remembered the term "chorus". I then asked what the other part of the song was, and no one remembered in either class. After re-introducing the term "stanza", I pointed to lyrics on the board that represented the stanza of the song. Only part of the stanza is echoed, and so where there was no echo, I had written an ellipsis; we practiced the first half of the stanza twice, with the partial echo. The end of the stanza has no echo whatsoever, but I wanted the students to do something here; I had written "1,2,3,4", and I wanted the students to chant the numbers (like a march) for the last four beats of the stanza. Since I didn't really expect the students to know when to come in, I had them practice the chant with me pointing to them to initiate the chant. We then practiced the whole stanza with the cue for the 1,2,3,4 chant - after which, I finished with the chorus. The students in either class never really sang the chorus together; we still did the final iteration in echo, and that's fine; we'll cover the chorus continuously in a later class.
Tommy Tinker	Continue rhythm exercises
I had recreated the beat and notes that were written on the moving whiteboard from last week, although I had centered Do at middle C this time instead of G. I proceeded to have the students finish the placement of the notes of the 2nd half of the song; when doing that, I realized that the students really didn't have a good grasp of the difference between beat and rhythm. So, I reviewed beat for a bit, including walking steadily while singing Tommy Tinker. I then proceeded to sing Tommy Tinker while stepping to the rhythm, and I asked both classes if anyone normally walks like that to the rhythm. On the board, I then wrote vertical bars separating each measure and we talked about how each measure contained 4 beats. I also pointed out that in some cases, notes (like "cry" and "guy") spanned multiple beats. We didn't really spend time discussing the different kinds of note duration, but I wanted to have the students feel comfortable enough to understand that notes did have duration of some sort.
A Yodeling Song	Teach quickly, get students to spontaneously take solos
A Yodeling Song was another song from Ella Jenkins that I found to be so simple yet so extensible. As sort of a transition to the next item, I simply started singing this song, and after two iterations, enough students were singing so that they could carry the song as a class. I then stopped the singing and I said that when I pointed to the class, it was their turn to continue singing. Like the recordings of A Yodeling Song that I have, I pointed to the class at the word "Yodeling", and they sort of seemed to get it, after an iteration or two. Next, I informed the class that when I pointed to a particular *student*, it was that student's turn to sing. I then proceeded to start the song again, pointing to individual students at the word "Yodeling". Eventually, I asked the students to raise their hands if they figured out what to sing, and that allowed me to choose plenty of students who presumably also wanted a turn. Again, this was simple and fun, without much rigor and concentration required from the students.
Austrian Yodeler	Go right into the song
Going from A Yodeling Song to the Austrian Yodeler is so easy, it's almost like cheating, but I did it anyway. I pointed to the map on the moving whiteboard where Austria was, and we were off! This time, I did have the students do a knee tap-clap-clap to the song, and they happily obliged. After singing about the avalanche and grizzly bear, I asked the students what the clap/tap pattern was, and how many clap/tap's there were in each iteration - behold a pattern of 3! I usually tell students that the most important number in music is 4, but here was something that was definitely based on 3. Anyhow, after that little diversion, we continued with the St. Bernard, followed by the skier (three whooshes) and Santa Claus (three ho's). With the tap/clap pattern, students were keeping tempo and singing together more effectively (although in the second class, there seemed to be an enclave of students who didn't want to participate at all), and with the skier and Santa Claus parts, I kept the tempo going rather than breaking for the encounter sounds.
Sarasponda	Teach Song
I had a little extra time with the first class, and since they hadn't covered Sarasponda yet, I decided it was time for them to learn it. I purposefully spent a little more time getting the students to say the words rather than sing it, and when they were repeating the words reasonably well, I simply added it to song. I glossed over the fact that the words meant little, as the song was meant to simulate the sounds of a spinning wheel. I had just enough time to go through the song once through without echoing, but by the time the class was over, it was clear that the students needed more practice.

I ended the class with another rendition of the donut song, this time with a little more motion. Yet again, few students remembered to sing "goodbye" at the end, and I had to sing the ending twice.

There was a whole lot of noise outside, particularly during the second class, and that might have led to a more challenging class. In fact, the first class, even with a substitute, did remarkably better than the second class, and over the past few weeks, I definitely see a dramatic change and improvement with that first class in terms of focus and willingness to try new things. Of course, the flip side is that perhaps I'm slowly losing members of the second class, and so I'll have to figure out ways to re-include everyone. The teacher offered to have music class in the regular classroom if there is too much construction noise outside the music room.

Ultimately, I didn't do a lot in terms of music literacy, and I need to find some way of achieving some level of readability without making it an academic exercise. Maybe I'll get a chance to do it next week.