| 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.
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