| March of the Toy Soldiers (Nutcracker) and forms | Play song for students and discuss forms |
| I started playing the song (over the room's speaker system - a first for me!) while the students were gathering onto the carpet. There were several students who remarked that they knew the song and that it was from The Nutcracker. (Some also noted that they themselves were performing in a local rendition of the show.)
I had pre-cut the three different musical themes to the show, and after the students listened to the entire song (about 2 1/2 minutes), I asked them to think of how they felt when hearing the first of the three snippets. I then asked the students, and I received (as expected) a variety of answers centering around dancing, marching, and in an overall sense, feeling positive. I then played the second snippet, and I received answers of "mad, stomping, and mild anger". The third snippet yielded feelings of fright, running, chasing, and hurriedness. I then had the teacher choose three students who were "having a good day", to come up to the front and represent one of the three musical snippets. Then, I asked the students to tell me whose music was playing while I replayed the original song; I wrote the first initial of the student's name corresponding to the snippet being played. The students did a pretty good job, although I did get more spurious answers about whose music was playing in the second class. With the pattern written out (AABAACAABAA), we recited the string of letters and I re-introduced the concept of the form to the students. Note that I doubled the lettering of the first snippet - by doing so, it keeps the amount of time attributable to each snippet the same. | |
| Jingle Bells | Run through song, review written notes |
| I took out a E tone bell (more on this later), displayed a page of lyrics (via the overhead projector onto the whiteboard) to (the chorus of) Jingle Bells, and instructed the class to sing what they saw. Of course they sang away. I asked them how many syllables there were for the first three phrases of the first line, and they answered correctly; I wrote out eleven vertical lines representing the syllables. I then asked the students if the syllables were all the same. Their initial answer was "no", but because the words were different. I then asked them to think of another reason why the syllables were different other than the differing words, and I couldn't get a compelling answer. I then recited the first line as if every syllable took the same amount of time. The students of course noted that the words aren't supposed to be spoken that way. They weren't supposed to be sung that way either, and so I asked them why not. At that point, a few students noted that some syllables had more space between them. Yay!
I knew that the students had music in past years, enough to know about the Kodaly rhythmic notes. And so, I decided to simply change the vertical bars into quarter and half notes by adding the circles to them. (I kept "jingle all the" near the end of that first line as 4 quarters.) Many students remembered the quarter and half note notation. I focused on the first measure (although I didn't use the term "measure" yet). I asked the students what 1/4 + 1/4 was; it took a while (and I don't think the students have quite worked with fractions yet), but eventually someone answered that you'd get 1/2. I then asked what was 1/4 + 1/4 + 1/2, and that took a little while, but eventually we reached an answer of 1. I wrote a vertical line to separate those three notes from the next three, but I didn't say why; I also noted that the next three notes also added up to 1. For the next four notes, I asked the students what 4 x 1/4 was - I got a few students also say "1", although I don't know if all of them knew exactly why, as I think some were just expecting a pattern. I drew two more vertical lines to separate the remaining measures on that first line. Finally, I pointed out that the last syllable/note/word had to take up the whole time, which was "1" - hence, the whole note. At this time, I re-introduced the term "measure", and its purpose in music. I then showed the students what the notes would look like for the rest of the song - I replaced the overhead projection of the words with another projection of the words plus notes (without the staff). I received some oohs and ahhs. I then took the time to point out two tidbits that we didn't see in the first line: eighth notes in a later measure, and two tied half notes ("sleigh" in "one horse open sleigh"). I tried to explain that the eighth notes were two syllables that had to fit in the space of a quarter, but I think I rushed that concept a bit; I eventually just offered that they were eighth notes, and 1/8 + 1/8 = 1/4, rather than having the students come up with that organically. The tied half notes were easier to explain - the students figured out that it was really representing two tones for the same syllable. I asked what would happen if the second of the tied notes were placed lower than the first, and the students correctly concluded that the sound would go down instead of up. I asked the students if they could see the height differences with many of the notes. Even notes that were only a step different had noticeable height differences, but I told the class that (1) students in the back of the class would have a much harder time seeing the height difference, and (2) it's hard to measure how much higher or lower you should sing the next note. I asked the students what helps them write on a piece of paper neatly - and they all knew that they needed lines in order to do that. And so, I replaced the overhead chart of notes and words with one with the same notes and words on musical staffs. I didn't mention the name "staff", but I did show them the helpfulness of having lines on a piece of paper. At this point, I changed the projected paper to the (first) stanza of Jingle Bells, and with that displayed, I gave them the sound of a "G" tone bell, and then asked the students to sing away. At the end of the stanza, I re-displayed the chorus in full musical staff glory. The pages of the lyrics, with and without the staff or notes were actually created via LibreOffice, although any drawing program that supports layers would do. I made the words, staff, and notes all different layers, and printing with our without these features was really easy. What was also nice is that the positions of the words and notes didn't change from slide to slide, and I think that really eliminated a source of random questions about differences between slides that don't matter. One last note here - during the math-related discussions, some students preferred to think of quarters and halfs in terms of dollars; 1/4 + 1/4 + 1/2 = 100 (cents). Perhaps that might be why "eighths" didn't make as much sense, instead of quarters and half (dollars). | |
| Winter Fantasy | Immerse song with sheet music |
| After the students sang Jingle Bells, I projected the sheet music for Winter Fantasy. I asked the students to look at the music while I sang through. I then asked the students to try to sing with me while they read the lyrics on the board again. I didn't really have much time to practice this, and I'll explain why I threw this up on the board later. The students seemed to pick up on the song pretty well, except for the faster parts when the students' voices simply dropped off. Incidentally, with Jingle Bells using quarters for "Jingle", Winter Fantasy ends up being littered with half notes. but the students didn't seem to be bothered by that.
You can find a link to the Winter Fantasy music here. | |
So, the following week is the last week before break, and our class happens to be on the last *day* before break. Both classes will be having a joint party and rather than not have music (or interrupt the party with music class), the other docent and I decided to try to do simultaneous classes during the 1st class timeslot, followed by a short sing-a-long with both classes. My *hope* is to be able to sing both Jingle Bells and Winter Fantasy at the same time; they do work well together, but it'll take some practice. The class that I have will likely be singing Winter Fantasy, and I'll have to make sure that they're prepared to sing even with the other class singing a different song. It'll also be a challenge to keep both classes in tune, as the 2nd class tends to want to shout rather than sing.
In past years, I've had students play tone bells to Jingle Bells, and it's always a big hit. However, this time, I clearly didn't have enough time, even with the second class for which I had more than 30 minutes. I don't like doing it, but I did mention to the second class that we were unable to spend much time with the tone bells because too many distractions impeded timely progress during the class.
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