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.