| A Rig A Jig Jig | Lead class into room with the song, teach two more stanzas, and settle in a circle |
| The last time I covered A Rig A Jig Jig, I had used it to lead students lining in from outside into the room and eventually into a circle. I was all ready to do exactly that with the first class, but thanks to the rain, the students arrived at the door a bit early, and not all that once. It didn't make sense to have them all wait in the rain outside, and so they filtered in. I still wanted to get them following me immediately (rather than having them just stand around and wait for the rest of the class), and so I gestured for a few students to follow me, and I started walking around the outside of the carpet, but in different ways - sometimes I'd just walk, sometimes I'd hop, sometimes I'd walk sideways or backwards, and sometimes I'd vary the length or height of my steps. Anyhow, I kept doing this for a while until I had about 80% of the students in, and then I started singing the song.
For the second class, the students were seated at their tables, and so I started walking around the class, tapping the shoulders of kids as a signal for them to follow me as I sang. The second class however seemed to have a little more trouble trying to follow the path of the other children; while the first class was able to maintain a circle, the second class seemed to continually shrink the circle over time; at the end of the song (before singing new verses), I had to get the students to re-form the circle around the outside of the carpet. We sang new verses - the clap/stomp verse (with clapping and stomping of course), as the jump/come back down verse (you can guess what we did here). After the stomping verse, I actually had the students stop singing but continue to stomp, in beat, and I asked the students what it meant to have a continuous but steady sound that lasts through the song. Only a few remembered "beat". :/ We ended the song and walk with A Rig A Jig Jig (the chorus). And, that's where things went differently. I was going to move onto the next exercise, but instead, I decided to write "Chorus" and "Stanza" on the board, and I taught the two classes what the words meant. I then asked the students what they sang the most, and naturally everyone picked out "A Rig A Jig Jig"; I wrote that phrase under "Chorus". Next, I asked the students what else they sang. The students from both classes remembered "Clapping/stomping", and I asked them what was sung next. It took a little while, but we did reach a consensus that indeed A Rig A Jig Jig followed. I wrote "Clapping/stomping" under "Stanza". We continued this process with the other two stanzas ("jump/come back down", and "As I was walking"). I then reviewed with the students what we song, by writing a capital A when we sang the chorus, and a lowercase first letter of a stanza when we sang a particular stanza. This led to a string resembling "AcAjAaA". I sort of forced the students down the path here to make the Stanzas simply "B" (no real reasoning given), and so that transformed the string to "ABABABA". Voila - that was the form of the song, and I told the students that all songs can be boiled down to a form like this. I promised that we'd talk about form again soon. | |
| Well Enough Said | Introduce the Call-Response |
| As an effort to get more ways to recapture the students' attention, I had them practice the "about that" response to "Well enough said". We tried it a few times, and I promised to use it again either later today, next week, next month, or next year! I did use it in both classes a few times later in the day. | |
| Seasons (fall version) | Teach song by immersion, get students thinking about beat |
| I had the lyrics for Seasons pre-printed, which I displayed either by hand (not quite ideal) or by projector (much better). Hopefully in the future we can get use of the projector in both classes, as the words are tremendously easier to view via the projector.
We sang through the song once, and then I displayed a slightly different version of the song, with the first letter of the first word of each of the four lines (measures) highlighted with a larger, red letter. I asked the students to count how many red letters there were, and I then had them clap during each red letter while singing the song. Without really going into why those letters were read, I showed another variation of the lyrics, where each 1st and 3rd beat of each line was marked with a large red first letter. I had the students count the red letters, and again we sang the song while clapping the red letters. Finally, there was a 4th slide of lyrics, this time with red letters on every beat. Without having them count, I had the students sing and clap immediately. I asked the students whether or not we were singing any faster, and after some thought (incorrectly) that we were, I had them sing again while I stomped, instead of clapped, the beat. I continued to stomp after the singing ended, and I asked the students if I was stomping evenly. The students eventually realized that indeed we weren't singing any faster or slower. I also asked if I was stomping in a steady interval, and that allowed me to point out that the clapping was nothing more than keeping the beat. We did go over how 4x2=8 and 8x2=16. Who says you can't teach math in music class? | |
| John Brown's Baby | Redo, but replace words with motions |
| I sang the song once more again with the baby motion, and then I told the class that they sang so well that they could probably sing the song without singing the words! I got a few confused looks, and so I told them to show the ASL motion for "baby" instead of singing it with their voice. I did it for them, to expected chuckles, and then I challenged them to try it. It *never* happens fully cleanly the first (or second, or third) time, but I didn't stop the song to correct them. We tried this twice, and there was clear improvement (in the quietness during "baby") from the first to second iteration. We then talked about how to remove "cold" - not feeling frigid, but the virus-borne cold - without noise. I had them practice the "world's quietest sneeze", and while there was always one or two students who kept making a sneezing sound, we were able to do the song with reasonable success.
At this point, the second class got really giggly and difficult to control. But, in the first class, I was able to proceed with replacing "chest" with tapping (lightly so that we couldn't hear it) the chest. Finally, I got to talk about how camphor and menthol doesn't smell favorably, and so I had them motion as if they were smelling something terrible. This of course generated a lot of giggles, and I simply had to blaze through the song with that motion. The students definitely had a lot of fun with this. | |
| 5 Fat Turkeys | Immerse students into the song and motions |
| I think I did this only with the second class (as I'll mention later I did something different with the first class), but since Thanksgiving was coming up (and I wouldn't have a class with the students before Thanksgiving), I wanted to do this.
This also served as a good way to recapture the students' attention. The students, after JBB, were all chuckling a bit uncontrollably, but I simply held my hands out quietly until I had a quorum of students watching. I then moved one hand into position, then the other into position - and then I just started singing the song. We did it one more time, and then I restarted the whole exercise of leaving the hands out again - this time reversing the hands and making a left-handed turkey. :) | |
| Syncopated Cyril | Teach dance, and try it with the song |
| I was only able to do this with the first class a few weeks ago, and so I wanted to try this out with the second class. The second class it seems has a harder time to stay focused; the class is very chatty, and there are a few students who have been more physical with each other, something that I don't see in first class. As a result, this was a bit of calculated risk, but I was really hoping for some level of success, since Syncopated Cyril is one of the simplest "dances" that you can think of.
Similar to what I did with the first class, I had the students line up on the two outermost edges of the carpet, and I explained that those edges represented the sidewalks of a street. (Even then, there were some students who for fun were jumping into the middle of the street.) Before we practiced crossing the street, I had to remind the students to not bump, push, or run. We practiced crossing a few times, and then it was time to have the people at the top of the lines walk down the middle. I don't think I did a good enough job with the practicing than I did with the first class, as I routinely had students bunch up near the end of the lines, making it that much harder down there to cross the street. This, despite the fact that I didn't even bother having the students try turning around. Alas, it was time to try out the song, and so we started. Again, I had only my laptop and its itty-bitty speakers to play music, which was a bit of a bummer. After the first pair of students walked down, the students (after some encouragement) did cross the street, but it took a long time, and there was no chance of trying to "go back". We were able to get through a few iterations until it became strikingly clear to me (and to many of the students) that people were jumping the lines (someone made their way to the top very quickly after already going down the middle). There was also some shoving going on near the back of the line, and I had to give a very stern warning to all 4 students involved, noting that all 4 had to work together. I stopped the music right there, and I then had the students sit down and talk about what was going on, and why there was so much commotion. It was this time when I asked the students what their room number was (9), and that I was going to call them "Team 9" (something that I got used to using back when I taught 3rd graders two years ago); this group wasn't just a room of students, it was a team, and it was imperative that we all work together to get this working. I also addressed the line jumping; I had the students stand up, line up, and look to their left and right to see who their neighbors were. I then reminded them that after they crossed the street, their neighbors should be the same neighbors. (This apparently was a sort of eureka for many of them.) I asked who had not walked down the center and wanted to, and I reordered the line a bit to put those students near the top. Off we went, with a restart of the song. This time, there was remarkably less pushing, although there was still some (which I was able to address quickly without issue). I still had to remind students to scoot towards the front as pairs of students were walking down the middle. But, in the end, we were able to complete the song, and students enjoyed it enough to ask for more. This was one of those cases where it was better to just re-try the exercise rather than move on or (worse) ask the students if they wanted to try (which would, I'm sure, have led to a lot varied answers and some very vocal No's). I'm glad we were able to get it done the second time around, and it also allowed every child (who wanted to) go down the middle of the path. We ended the exercise with another powwow, talking about what worked. A student noted that it worked better when they all worked as a team to cross the street, which I was happy to hear; if the students take away anything, it would be a way to work together more effectively, even if they don't remember how to do this dance. I had to use Well Enough Said a bunch of times for the second class in order to recapture their attention. At least the WES responses got a bit tighter as the day proceeded. | |
| Many Things I am Thankful For | Teach Song, zipper or solo in substitutions |
| Since I wanted to do a dance with the second class, I taught this song to only the first class. We started out talking about Thanksgiving, what it meant to the students (people liked spending time with family, etc.), and eventually we talked about the origins of Thanksgiving. I then decided to sing the song, and for good measure, I signed "Earth", "sea" and "friends" in ASL. After singing through the song, I asked what the students were thankful for, and I sang through the song while inserting the students' suggestions. There's always risk of getting some unusual suggestions (someone suggested "money"), but we sang them anyway.
My original hope was to get some solos in, and even after suggestions 4-6, no one wanted to do a solo. I finally was able to get two volunteers for suggestions 7 and 8. I had to prompt the students to sing the full zipper "I'm thankful for….", and not just the topic that they were thankful for. But, after we sang through, it seemed like the rest of the class was more inspired to sing solos as well, as there were plenty of hands now shooting up. I probably should have kept going, but I did want to cover more things, and so I changed activities. | |
| Fish and Chips and Vinegar | Immerse students into song, get students to sing multiple parts |
| I started doing a pat-clap-clap pattern until most of the students started following me, and then I started singing the first stanza to the percussive pattern. During "Pepper, pepper, pepper, salt", I motioned with large sweeping arms adding pepper and salt to an imaginary plate, which amused the children to no end. I had pre-printed out the lyrics, one stanza per sheet, such that each line contained exactly one measure, and for the second class, we managed to project the lyrics onto the board, which helped the class a bit, as we were getting short on time there. We practiced this three times before moving onto the next stanza.
For the Dustpan stanza, I changed the percussion to a clap-palm slide-palm slide (as if you were simply rubbing your palms together like they were sand blocks). Again, I immersed the students with the song, and again I had the lyrics projected for the second class. When it came to the 3rd stanza, I ended up motioning the numbers in ASL, and I took a short break to teach 8, 9 and 10 in ASL as well. With all 3 stanzas now covered, I had the students sing the entire song once through and ending again with the first stanza (4 stanzas total). While that was all I could do with the second class, for the first class, I also recorded the students singing - as expected they really loved hearing themselves, but interestingly for the first time they sang to a computer, they were actually singing a bit timidly. I then split the class into two and had one side sing the first stanza repeatedly while I cued in the other side singing the 3rd stanza. It sounded sort of ok, but I had to conduct the classes pretty vigorously in order to keep them together. I recorded them singing the two parts also, and this time, both sides were trying to drown out each other. I played back only a small snippet of the clipped recording, and I talked a bit about the limits of recording, as well as singing without yelling. We'll try this (for both classes) in the near future again. | |
I really need to take the time either to get access to the sound system in either classroom, or I need to make use of the boombox more. In addition, I also need to find time to bring out some of the instruments.
I'm going to need another tool to recapture the students attention, particularly for the second class. Well Enough Said works great because it's loud, the response is (ideally) quick and loud, and the students are quiet immediately afterward. Some teachers use the "dum didley dum dum" call and answer, and while it sometimes works, I think I'll need to find something more unusual yet strong enough to be effective when the students are chatting or being otherwise noisy and inattentive.
On a side note, I also get to spend some time with my daughter's pre-K class as a music teacher. I did something similar last year, and it sounds like I'll have a similar opportunity again the following week (when I'm not teaching the 2nd graders). And so, my next post will talk about singing with 4- and 5- year olds.
No comments:
Post a Comment