Spring Sing, 20120605

On 6/5, our school had an open house that originally served two purposes: it gave incoming parents (for next year) a chance to talk to current parents, and it allowed current students to show their parents what had been covered in the classroom.  This year, we also added a music show (a spring sing, as I liked to call it) featuring students from K, 1st and 3rd grades, all led by Music for Minors docents.  While this blog typically contains information about what I've taught during class, it also serves as a record for myself to know what worked and what didn't, and since this was the first time that I had organized a spring sing (and the first time that the school had such an event), I thought I'd chat a little bit about it.

We started planning the spring sing about 4 weeks before the Open House, which arguably was probably not quite enough time.  The previous month had an event called International Day which seemed to consume a lot of energy from many parents, including most MfM docents at the school, and so it was hard to plan much before Internaltional Day had passed.  Originally, I had asked the docents if they were up for performing, and all but the 2nd grade docents showed interest.

I had given the option to have grades perform either together or separate, and since the 1st grade docents tag-team, it seemed natural to them to have the 1st graders all perform together.  Similarly, the Kindergarteners were split between the two docents (who didn't mix or split classes together), and so we had planned two K performances, a 1st grade performance, and a 3rd grade performance.

One thing that we didn't really have nailed down firmly was the start time, and since we only really have one day per week to get fliers to the students' parents, we had to make fliers printed out about two weeks in advance.  Shortly after printing them and distributing them, we were told to move our start time by a half hour to give the incoming parents a chance to mingle, and so that meant more fliers!  In all, I probably spent about $50 at Kinkos, and perhaps we could have done a better job establishing an appropriate start time.

During the Open House day, we had the K and 1st students gather around 15 minutes before showtime, while I had the 3rd graders prepare themselves right around showtime.  The trouble however was that I was the de facto MfM host/representative, and so I found it hard to be at two places at once.  I had to leave my 3rd graders (fortunately, I had them congregate around their classrooms rather than close to the performance area), in order to introduce the Kinders.  Also, there was a slight change in plans - the K groups were to merge because of low attendance for the smaller group; in retrospect, we should have combined them from the start.  This caused a slight delay in the K start time, and pushed back the entire schedule a little bit.

The performances themselves were quite wonderful.  There were a *lot* of parents watching each student group, which was a blast to see.  There was a little bit of a logistical challenge as there was only one way in or out of the performance area, and so one grade had to clear out completely before the next grade could go on.  However, otherwise, it worked out well.

As for my own students, they performed splendidly, if I say so myself.  :)  The students performed far better than they did during any rehearsal that I conducted with them, including the one just 15 minutes before we hit the stage.  For the record, we sang "You'll Sing a Song", followed by "Rattlin' Can", and ending with "Do Re Mi".  For the Rattlin' can, I had brought out a larger "can" compared to what we had been using earlier in the year - this one was a bright orange bucket from Home Depot, holding a shoebox with a bag that held a 64-oz juice container.  These props were very easy to see from where the parents were.

I am absolutely expecting that we will be doing another spring sing next year, again perhaps during the Open House.  In all, it went pretty well for an inaugural performance, and it'll only take minor tweaks to have it go more smoothly next year.

Teaching Notes, 20120531

Today's class again was another warmup for the open house. However, we also were presented the opportunity to sing for a group of exchange students from China who had spent a few weeks at the school. And so, everything that we did was geared towards either the mini-show and the upcoming open house.

Mini show: Teaching Peace	Sing the song
Singing for the students was a little chaotic. The teachers, whose time was already constrained by Literacy Week events, brought their students in to a covered area near where they would perform. However, when they assembled, there were performances by the exchange students (for parents and host students) still going on. We ended up waiting for about 10 minutes before we could go on, which meant 10 minutes of trying to keep students quiet. One student, after I told the group to be quiet decided to yell very loudly, and I immediately had to pull that student to the side, disqualifying him for the show. When we went on, it took about 3 minutes to assemble everyone on the risers (good practice for next week!), and then after a very brief introduction by myself, I simply started singing the song along with the students while playing a guitar. We went through the whole song (although I think I mixed up the ordering of the stanzas, and we even covered the sound-off. When we finished, I had the students do the Union Chant, and they correctly (without my prompting) cheered with "College Park" at the end. We then left the stage area and retreated back to a gathering area by the classrooms.
You'll Sing A Song	Review song, change pitch
I printed lyric sheets before this class and I had them distributed to the students. Half of them brought them to today's class, and fortunately I had printed out one class' worth of additional sheets. I modified the song from last week so that the students, after singing the regular English verse, sang "I'll Hum a Tune", followed by humming the regular tune. I then told the students that we'd go up in pitch, which we did while singing in Spanish, followed by Chinese. (I dropped the French lyrics; they were least familiar to the students last week and I didn't need the song to be any longer than necessary.) I had also planned to return to English lyrics at the original pitch, but it seemed like the students wanted to stay at the higher pitch. Plus, it was easier on guitar; the original pitch was F, which made a much more difficult chord progression vs. the later starting pitch of G.
Rattlin' Can	Review song, add larger props
In keeping the students thinking that today's class was a rehearsal, I next had the students sing Rattlin' Can. However, unlike last week, I had larger signs on oaktag with printouts of the last 6 items - juice, bubbles, air, atoms, quarks, Q. I also had 5 students from each class hand the signs (and the 4 original props), and we sang through the song. With 4 props and 6 signs, there was no sharing of props like we had last week.
Do-Re-Mi	Review song
During the last week's class, the students sang this song together for the first time. We went through the song as it was printed on the lyric sheets, which had me start the song off with "Sol Do La…", with the students catching up very quickly. Next sung was "If you know…", followed by the standard Do Re Mi. Last week, I also tried to have the 2nd class eventually sing the "Do Mi Mi" sequence twice as fast, while the 1st class sang "If you know", but upon practicing it again here, it was clear that the students would struggle trying to keep it together. As such, I had the students at that time simply sing "If you know" in unison. Now, what was coming together nicely was another split part, where I had the second class sing the standard "Do A Deer" stanza, while the first class sang out drawn out notes "Do…..", "Re……", etc. This worked out really well, even though the first class seemed to rush things a bit. Actually, on my lyric sheets, I had written out for the last three notes of the scale something like "Sol… thread", "La… Sol", "Ti… bread", and since that sort of meant that those first class students were elevating their pitch early, it sent some singing the next note early too. If I didn't cue them to sing those extra words, they didn't, but they also didn't rush up the scale, as I discovered while practicing this section of the song a few times.

The one student who I had pulled aside was still acting distant at the end of the practice, and so I sat down with him. He refused to look at me while I explained to him the importance of listening to teachers. At one point, while the other students were filtering back into their classrooms, I noted that I had plenty of time and would wait until he looked at me, at which time he very very slowly turned his head (but wouldn't commit his eyes), but I could tell that he was actually pretty sad, while trying to hold back tears. I hope he understood his situation, and while it took a little bit of effort, I got him to give me a (slow) high-five. My students, after performing just the single song, were actually quite energized by the performance, and multiple students asked why we only sang one song; they seemed eager to continue to sing. I'll have a separate blog entry about how the show went.