Teaching Notes, 20120524

Today's class was pretty much a designed warmup for the open house. During the event, I was going to have both 3rd grade classes sing together. As a result, I wanted to devote some time to having all of the students sing together. After teaching the first class, I led them outside and eventually brought in the second class to join them. Afterwards, I planned on holding music class with the 2nd class.

You'll Sing A Song	Warmup, change pitch
I had the students sing the song in English. I then asked them what they would sing if I said "hum a tune" - and a few students started to sing the variation. I then had them hum the tune. I had all of the lyrics pre-printed, and so after the humming, I showed the students the lyrics in Spanish, and we sang through them. I then asked the students to sing (a whole step) higher, which they did. Like in past classes, I had the lyrics also in French, and we practiced that. Finally, I had the lyrics in Chinese, and while it required some deliberate review and practice, the students sang it pretty well, save for the last line. All this time, I was trying to accompany the students on my guitar, and I found it to be very difficult to sing and play at the same time. And so, I told the students that they'd have to sing for me, which they mostly did. I left the lyric sheets with the teachers, and I asked them to practice the chinese lines. I don't think that we'll be singing the French lines for the Spring Sing.
Rattlin' Can	Review song, add props
I'm pretty sold on having the students sing Rattlin' Can, and so I started them quickly on the song. But since I also wanted to play the guitar, I had students come up and hold each prop - first the can, then box, then bag, then bottle of juice. I also had pictures for air, atoms, quarks, and a Q. That left only one prop (the bottle) to represent the bottle, the juice, and the bubbles; those three students had to pass the bottle back and forth, which was amusing to watch. As we sang through the song, one more student would come up and hold a prop, eventually leading to a long line of 10 students. During the Spring Sing, I'll have 5 students from one class and 5 from the other.
Do-Re-Mi	Review song, and combine classes
Outside the classrooms, there is a nice semicircular set of steps, almost like a mini-theater, and so I led the first class so that they sat or stood on one side of the semicircle. We sang through Do Re Mi, and then I checked in with the 2nd class. The 2nd class was still finishing up, and so I took the time to review with the first class the "Sol Do La.." sequence, which they did well. I also taught them the worded sequence of the same melody: "When you know the notes to sing, you can sing most anything" (also from the movie), which they learned. The 1st class also didn't get to sing "Do Mi Mi…", and so I had just enough time to teach them that. When the 2nd class came out, I had them sit on the other half of the semicircle. Fortunately, there were handrails that allowed me to define a good separator between the two classes. I had the 2nd class quickly warm up with the Sol Do La sequence, followed by the worded version (which was new to them, but they handled it just fine). We then sang together the song. I had both classes also try the two sequences, plus the "Do Mi Mi" sequence all together, and it sounded good. We ended the joint session with the Team Chant, but with a shout of "College Park" near the end.

When I resumed class with the 2nd class, we also practiced singing the Do Mi Mi sequence twice as fast; while the class continued to repeat it quickly, I sang "When you know…" at half the speed, simulating what I hope to have the combined group sing. Next week, we may have a bit of a preview of what it's like to sing in public, as we'll have an opportunity to sing to some exchange students who are leaving the school. I hope it'll encourage some of the students who might be undecided about attending the Open House to come and sing during the event.

Teaching Notes, 20120517

It's official - we are going to have our first spring sing at the school, which will be part of the open house in June. I also wanted to go back to the music room since it sounded like the construction outside was less noisy than it has been recently. Unfortunately, the noise was just as loud, and so it was a bit of a challenge to get the students to pay attention, particularly the first class students.

You'll Sing A Song	Warmup, change pitch
You'll Sing A Song is one of the songs that I'd like to have the students perform at the open house. In the past, we've covered the song in four languages - English, Spanish, French, and Mandarin, and my hope is to also add a bit of modulation in between languages. Thus, after we sang the song twice through, I had the students sing it just a little bit higher, and they did (for the most part). I didn't have printed out the other languages, so I couldn't really review the song in anything but English, but no matter, I'll do this song again next week with preprinted sheets.
Hello My Friends	Review song, add Spanish
Now that we were back in the music room, I took the time to return to Hello My Friends. The lyric sheets in different languages were still up on the wall, and so I had the students quickly sing through them (although I skipped one or two of them for the 2nd class in order to save time). I then introduced the lyrics in Spanish on a sheet of paper and put it on the wall. With many of the students in the class native Spanish speakers, it was easy for them to read (and they also noted that I had printed "mi amigos" instead of "mis amigos"), and so we sang right through it. I had to re-teach the coda again, and then we finished off the song.
Cho-co-la-te	Review chant, try a few other things
Since we were back in the music room, I re-laid tape down on the carpet for the students to sit on. I also made sure this time to have 4 different colors of tape - blue/white for the front line, and red/green for the back line. With the Cho-co-la-te chart on the board, we first reviewed the chant, then splitting the class in two, then in four. I also split the class such that the students sitting on the green line quadrant chanted the 4th beat, while everyone else chanted the other three beats. The chart had words written in three colors: blue (primary beat), red (2nd half of the beat), and green (the 4th beat for the first 4 measures). I was curious whether or not the students would be able to do the chant while splitting beats. So, I called up two students who typically paid more attention, and I had one say "U", while the other say "no", followed by "dos, tres" by the first student, finished off with "Cho!" by the 2nd. It was an interesting exercise, but not one that I really could spend extended time on.
Do Re Mi	Add new parts, review song
The students know Do Re Mi well, but I also spent some time listening to a recording from The Sound of Music, trying to get ideas. I picked up the Sol-Do-La-Fa-Mi-Do-Re sequence, which I had the stduents try singing. For the first class, I had the students talk, then sing in piecemeal the sequence, but I found that the students got bored of this quickly, making it difficult to teach. For the second class, with the sequence on the board, I simply sang it, and asked the students to repeat me, and they did! (I should have given the first class more credit in what they could do.) In both classes, we sang through the song quickly, but with the success of the sequence in the 2nd class, I also taught them the second sequence (Do Mi MI, Mi Sol Sol, Fa Re Re, La Ti Ti), and they sang it too. Neat.
Rattling Can	Dive into song
Rattling Can was so quickly successful in past classes that I felt it would be very easy to do for the Open House. I brought out the can, and the kids starting singing along automatically. Part of this exercise was to reconfirm that the students felt good about the song, and part was to figure out what items to sing about as we got later into the song. Based on interest and verbal rhythms, it sounded like words like "molecules" and "oxygen", while familiar to the students, were a mouthful. However, after introducing "quarks", the students were very interested in singing about something that quarks were made of, and so someone suggested "Q's" - cute, but it works!

I really was hoping for more, especially out of the first class, given that we were back in the music room, but with the outside noise, perhaps that was too much to ask for. As for the spring sing, I'm likely going to settle on You'll Sing A Song, Rattling Can, Do Re Mi, and possibly Teaching Peace. It's a lot to sing, and we only have two classes to pull it together, but I'm thinking it's doable.

Teaching Notes, 20120510

With only about 5 classes left, I wanted to keep working on music literacy opportunities, and so I had prepared two large easel-sized three-measure exercises for the students. But of course, I had lots to review. I also wanted students to get into the habit of analyzing (quickly) songs that they encountered.

Take Me Out To The Ballgame	Immerse students into the song, and talk about its characteristics
I was banking on plenty of students knowing this song, and indeed most did. As I sang the song, I clapped at the start of each measure, and eventually the students followed. This turned out to be a nice way to start the day, as it was a song new to the music class, but not to the students, and it was an easy sing. After we completed the song, I asked the student whether or not it was major or minor, and then what the time signature was. Most couldn't figure out the time signature, and so I resang two lines of the song, this time with a stomp on the 1st beat, and claps on the 2nd and 3rd. Even then, it took a little bit of hinting before students arrived at the correct answer. In the second class, I actually started playing the Skaters' Waltz because the teacher, when transitioning the class from an activity to music, had a slow waltz in the background. The waltz in this case afforded me the opportunity to ask what the time signature was. I then sang Take Me Out To The Ballgame to the class. I took the time to play a few other songs, including the Nutcracker Waltz and Tritsch Tratsch Polka, and I also planned to talk about how they were classical pieces, but I forgot to do so.
Tone Bells	Review use of bells, scale, and sing a song
I had a C scale laid out using Tone Bells, and after playing the notes in succession, I had the students sing single notes from Do to Do. I then had the students fall into the Do Re Mi song. (At first I had the picture cues, but the students didn't really need them after a few lines of the song.) After singing the song, I called up 7 students, each taking one note from the scale (I had the high C), and before we sang again, I noted how we needed a starting pitch; thus, I asked the first student - the one holding the low C - to play a note for everyone to hear. We then sang the song with each of the 7 students playing the starting note for each line. Next, I had the Do-Mi-Sol players try playing together - and fortunately it didn't take much extra practice for them to follow me and play on cue as a trio. I asked the students if what they heard was major or minor, and most guessed correctly. I then had Re-Fa-La play together, and most students recognized that the tones produced a minor triad, even though they were components of a major scale.
Rhythm Exercises	Review quarter and eighth notes and rests, introduce other durations
I had written on a chart a 3 bar series of quarter notes - CDEFAFED, and then a whole note C. We talked about the structure of the written music - how it had a treble clef, how I had a tie signature, and how there were lines separating measures. After confirming for the Nth time that there were four beats per measure, I had the students focus on the last note. Knowing that all of the notes in a measure had to add up to 4 beats, I convinced the students to believe that that funny hollow circle was a 4 beat note, and that since it took up the whole measure, it was known as a whole note. I played the series to the students on the bells. Next, I showed the students another similar 3-bar series, except that instead of quarter notes, there were two eighth notes of each pitch; i.e. CCDDEEFFAAFFEEDD C. I talked about how the tempo or beats doesn't change, but the rhythm does, and it sounds as if it were twice as fast as the quarter note rhythm. At this point, I showed the students a picture of a metronome, and I played a metronome app on my laptop to illustrate a steady beat. For one class (because there was time), I had a student try to play the 3 bar sequence while accompanied by the metronome app. Next, I showed the students basically the same notes, except that instead of two eighth notes, the sequence used one eighth note and one rest. When clapped, this new rhythm sounds like clapping straight quarters, but I reminded the students that the rests had to be (non)heard. I challenged the class with a question - how would you play such a sequence with tone bells that tend to want to ring for a while. I received a variety of mostly incorrect answers, but one student in the first class noted that the sound of the bell could be silenced by touching the metal. I then proceeded to play to the students this funny 3-bar set, dampening each bell when I came across a rest. At this point, I went back to reviewing notes, and I had written on the board an eighth and a quarter note. In between, I wrote "x2 = " in smallish letters, but large enough for the students to see from the back of the carpeted area. I then talked about how one eighth note times two equaled one quarter, and that in music, you can keep doing the x2 exercise a few things. Using that logic, two times a quarter meant a half, and so I drew a half note beside the quarter note, but away from the eighth note. I also drew the whole note, which was of course 2x a half note. Next, I offered to the student the possibility of extending the sequence the other way - that is, going shorter and shorter. I asked the students if they knew what half an eighth was, and a few students did - using that answer, I drew a sixteenth note, and I reminded the class how the flags on the stem dictated what kind of note it was. We kept going back to 32nd notes, 64ths, and 128ths, just for fun. Back to the written music - I had also written two more sequences that were similar but now of different lengths; first up was the sequence written using half notes instead of quarters. This basically doubled the number of measures while making the music twice as slow. I also had a sequence written out using a group of four sixteenth notes instead of quarter notes, and this time I did have students come up and try to play the sixteenth notes while acccompanied by the ticking metronome app. I started at 60bpm, and eventually moved up to 72bpm, which was clearly challenging for the students who tried it at that speed.
Cho-co-la-te	Immerse students into the chant
At first I thought that this exercise was going to be way too simple for the students, but even if it was, they still had a lot of fun with it. I had the students talk through the pattern with me, and then we chanted in a sprightly tempo. Next I split the class into two (left/right), and I had one group chant columns (beats) 1 and 2, while giving the other group columns 3 and 4; we then tried chanting again in this method. I then split the class again into four groups, assigning each group one column such that the groups in order formed a circle. Now, this turned out to be a bit of a challenge to chant, and we had to attempt this a few times, while I was gesturing pretty emphatically at both the board and the group whose turn it was to chant. I finished off the exercise by having everyone chant the entire sequence, except that beats 1-2-3 were sung in piano (quietly) while beat 4 was forte (although, more like "firm", rather than shouting). I wrote the Chocolate diagram so that each half beat was also separated, and so we probably will revisit this again next week.

I had ready also a rainforest chant/song that I had learned during the past weekend at a Sweet Honey In The Rock performance. I'll use it next week.

Teaching Notes, 20120503

Thanks to a field trip, there were two weeks since the last class. It was also the start of May, and historically I've done something special in May - either a Hawaiian-oriented May Day class, or a Cinco de Mayo class involving Spanish-oriented songs. This time, I decided to do something Hawaiian-oriented. However, I also wanted to introduce new stuff while continuing to build on the students' knowledge of rhythms and notes. And so, I had a whole lot to do today.

The Hidee Ho Man (Ella Jenkins)	Immerse students into the song, see if they follow the rhythms
This is a kid-centric and 100% echo variation of the Cab Calloway "Minnie the Moocher" song that spends half of the time having the children (audience) repeating the "Hidee-esque" chorus. Starting this song was pretty simple; I asked the students to repeat after me, and I simply just dove into the song, even when about a quarter of the students were still settling down on the carpet. Similar to the Ella Jenkins recording, I varied the volume and tempo a bit, and eventually tried to do a chorus that went twice as fast rhythmically than normal; the students did a pretty good job keeping up.
Major vs. Minor	Use tone bells to illustrate a scale and its relative minor
Before diving into the scale, I asked students if they had sung a song outside of music class to themselves; most did, and then I asked how they felt when they sang. Almost universally the students said that singing made them happy and/or energized. I then played a C-scale using 8 tone bells. After reviewing terms like "octave" and "scale", I asked the students how they felt when I played the scale. Most said something along the lines of "happy", "dancing", etc. We also reviewed the fact that the notes had letter names, and that there were only 7 different letters in written music. I then removed the top two notes and added an A and B to the end. I asked the students to think how they felt while I proceeded to play the A-natural (minor) scale. Not all the students said that they felt differently, but some noted that they felt like something was indeed different. We talked a bit about how the first scale was a major scale and the second was a minor scale, but they were made of basically the same notes. In the second class, the students wanted me to play all 10 notes, and I obliged, while asking the students to try to listen when the scale changed from minor back to major.
Time Signatures	Review and examine various time signatures: C, 3/4, 5/4, 7/4
Back to a board, I reviewed how the time signature was defined by the beats in each measure, and we practiced coming up with 4/4. (I also introduced the concept of "common" time.) I then removed one beat from a sample set of four, and thus I changed the time signature to 3/4. I had the students practice echoing me in three (with three quarter-note claps), but at first students would implicitly add a silent 4th beat before repeating me. It took a few more repetitions before the students were echoing me truly in 3. I then changed the time signature to 5/4, and I the student practice echoing me in 5. The students, perhaps after practicing echoing in 3 so much, were able to nail down echoing in 5 quickly. Finally, I changed the time signature to 7/4. However, rather than have the students clap 7 times is succession (which could have been hard on their hands), I split the students into two halves, and I had the left half (which was also the starting half) clap in 4, while the right half would clap in three. At this point, in the first class, one disruptive student was already sitting out, but I asked him to listen if he could hear 7 beats. Getting the students to come in instantly is actually pretty hard when you're not leading them so much, and so I had to continue to gesture dramatically in order to get the second group of students to come in on time. I then had the students keep pseudo-echoing each other - 4,3,4,3,etc., and while that was going on, I asked if the student who was sitting out could hear the 7 beats, and indeed it was audible. Before moving on to the next activity, I asked the students if they knew songs that were played in 7, 5, or 3. Finding examples of 3 is easy, but finding examples of the other meters is difficult. For the second class only (mostly because I simply forgot to do this for the first class), I played a few different songs as examples of 3, 5, or 7. For 5/4, I had a record of Take Five, and for 7/4, I played Solisbury Hill (Peter Gabriel).
More rhythm sticks	Review class rhythms, practice Hawaiian patterns
Before handing out the sticks, I wrote out the class pattern, and we practiced clapping to it a few times. (That 4th bar with a rest-eighth is hard for the kids!) Then, I handed out sticks (while singing Everybody Oughta Know for the first class, and You'll Sing a Song for the second class). We also did a quick review of the quarter notes and rests, and eighth notes and rests. Then, I showed them a sheet of paper with four quarter notes, except that this time the head of the note alternated low, high, low, high on the stick. (There was no staff.) We then talked about what the different notes might mean, even though they were all still eighth notes. Convincing the class that the top-headed note meant it was some other kind of sound, I had the students start playing bottom-headed notes on the carpet, as if they were drumming, and top-headed notes in the air, like they normally would have with sticks. This combo gave the students more to think about when playing the sticks (and fortunately, no sticks were broken during this exercise), and it also gave them a second sound to work with. The second paper had something different: eighth(down), eighth(up), quarter(up), and a half rest. We hadn't covered half rests before, and so we talked about the fact that you needed two beats' worth of rests in order to keep the 4/4 time. After practicing that rhythm (which was surprisingly hard given the quick transition from down to up using eighth notes), we combined both measures and we practiced two bars' of rhythm for a while. I then pulled out two more sheets, which comprised a further combination of eighth and quarter notes (and quarter rests). The two bars of rhythms match reasonably well the first few lines of No Ka Moku Kiahaki (Keali'i Reichel), and so I had the class try to drum to the rhythm with that song in the background. I actually had two more lines of rhythms, but there wasn't enough time for it.

I actually also had May Day Is Lei Day ready to sing (and lyrics printed), but I didn't have enough time to get to it. We ended the day with the team chant.

Teaching Notes, 20120419

And, finally, we're back from spring break! I knew that I would have to do some sort of review, but I also realized that I had only about 8 more classes left for the rest of the year. Plus, there would be no class scheduled for the following week because of a field trip. So, I had to make the most of my time. Before the 2nd class started, the teacher had some ragtime playing through her keyboard (sort of like one of those demo songs), and before I started what I had planned with the class, I asked the students if they recognized the kind of music. We have yet to spend a lot of time talking about other genres of music (other than a capella), and so we talked about ragtime a little bit and how it was a genre more popular back when film was just starting out.

Teaching Peace	Review song
In both classes, the students were seated on the colored carpet, so moving right into song seemed natural. But even before we started, I noticed (especially in the first class) that my ukelele was out of tune. I then talked about what happens when one leaves an instrument in a hot car, and how things expand or contract in hot or cold weather. I even showed the students how a tiny bit of tuning peg movement made a noticeable difference in the pitch of the string. We were able to sing through Teaching Peace without too much difficulty, although most students in both classes forgot what to do at "sound off". I also knew that I had forgotten at least one of the stanzas; I recall repeating a stanza rather than using both. I had originally planned on continuing to recreate rhythms for the chorus of Teaching Peace, but I never got to doing it.
Rhythms and Time Signatures	Review notes and rests, introduce more rhythm elements
I had written on pieces of paper either a single quarter note (really just a vertical "ta" line), or a quarter rest, or two eighths, an eighth rest followed by an eighth note, or an eighth note followed by an eighth rest. Then, on a board, I put out four sheets, each showing a quarter note, and I had the students clap the (very simple) rhythm. We quickly reviewed how each paper represented a beat, and four quarters made up a whole measure. I also wrote a "4" to the left of the beats, noting that there were four beats there. I then removed a beat, and I asked the class how many beats there were now - only 3, and so I wrote a "3" above the four. I realize that the 4 underneath isn't really to represent a number of beats, and perhaps I sort of invented my way to explaining how the lower four meant we had quarter notes for beats, but it was an easy leap for students to suddenly go to 5/4 time and know that there were 5 beats there and 5 quarter notes there. Getting the students to clap three beats after I clapped three beats took a bit of practice; I had to remind them not to add a 4th silent beat after I clapped. I also talked about how the students already knew some songs in three (like the Star Spangled Banner). Returning to 4 beats per measure, I replaced a note with a quarter rest, and I had the class practice clapping to the rhythm. I then replaced another beat with two eighth notes, and again we practiced clapping. At this point, I asked if the students were getting tired of clapping, and most did, and so I passed out rhythm sticks. I was a little unprepared here to find a proper way to distribute sticks in such a small space, and as a result I sort of flubbed singing a song for the first class; for the second class, I didn't even bother singing a song. Whoops. We continued to mix quarter notes, quarter beats, and double eighths, and then I noted how quarter rests simply replace quarter notes - why couldn't we do this for eighth notes? And, so I introduced the eighth rest. That then allowed me to introduce the unbarred eighth note, and I showed them initially a paper with an eighth rest followed by an eighth note. We practiced a rhythm with this sort of measure a lot before the students got it right. Not everyone did by the time I moved on. I then replaced the eighth rest/eighth note page with a eighth note/eighth rest page, and I had the students try clapping - lo and behold it sounded just like a regular quarter note! I wanted to illustrate this non-change in order to get the students to realize that beats also mean time spent, and a clap is a very short period of time, even if it is supposed to take up the space of a single beat. I plan on doing more interesting things next week to illustrate this. I always wanted the class to create seemingly random rhythms, and so next I asked four different students to select one of the different papers, and replace each beat (one at at time) with what they selected. The second class students managed to pick nearly all rests initially, so I had a few others choose non-rests. The students came up with: 1st class: quarter, eighth rest/eighth note, two eighths, eighth rest/eighth note 2nd class: quarter, quarter rest, two eighths, eighth note/eighth rest Yup - the two classes nearly made the same rhythm. We practiced each rhythm in each class a few times over and over until the students were able to play each through twice without stopping. I'm sure they won't remember next week, so we'll try it out again.
Tuwe Tuwe	Teach song
I only taught this to the first class, as they had never been introduced to the song before, but it didn't go so well. It didn't sound like the students were really all that interested in learning the song, and so it took a while for them to really pay attention well and follow. This was a bit disappointing, since Tuwe Tuwe can be a really neat sounding song when sung in a round. Perhaps with 3rd graders, the students are more prone to giggling when given a song that is longer and all in a different language, but I know that they didn't have issues with Hello My Friends in the many other languages. I'll probably try this again later in the weeks to come.

Again, I found myself doing only a few different larger units in a single day's lesson, and I wonder if I'm stretching things too long, even though the students are 3rd graders and not younger. I'll plan on mixing things up a little more next time, but I think I'll want to do it in the music room, where I have more tools at my disposal.