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.