| Down By The Sea | Teach motions, lead students through the song |
| Unlike last year, this year's winter has been really really cold. As a result, it was easy to ask the students how cold it was outside, ask them what they wanted when it was too cold, and then ask them pretend they were on a tropical island. And so, I walked the students, who had already casually gathered onto the carpeted area in a circle, to motion swimming. I then had the students pretend they were riding on a raft. Each time I added another motion, I repeated the previous motions, but in their original order just like the song does. And then, I started snapping and I asked the students to snap or clap with me. (The snapping actually is on the offbeats, and so I actually didn't tell the students that they were (or weren't) on the beat.)
I paced the song pretty slowly, much more slowly than the song itself, mainly so that I wouldn't feel like I was rushing through the song as the aggregation became more complex. As I sang the song, the students performed the motions as they were prompted through the song. By the 3rd iteration, the students had picked up on parts of the chorus, and by the 4th, they were mostly singing the chorus with me (unless they were giggling about wiggling toes in the sand). With the slower pace and the practice beforehand, this activity took nearly 10 minutes! I didn't really plan for that amount of time, but the students seemed to enjoy the song. | |
| Ukulele Introduction | Introduce instrument and uke structure |
| I took some time to introduce (or for the first class, re-introduce) the instrument to the students. The first class received a mini-introduction already last month, and so for the second class, I walked through the origin of the name, and I allowed each of the students to strum the instrument. For both classes, we talked about the makeup of the instrument, and someone asked why there was a hole! (In all my years, no one has pre-emptively asked about the hole in the body.) Both classes had convenient note cards that I used to illustrate the importance of the resonating chamber. | |
| Jambo | Teach words, song |
| I started strumming a bit, and then I encouraged the students to learn a few words from a different language: Swahili! I had the students practice the words Jambo, Jambo Sanna, Jambo Watoto, and then I had them echo me through the entire song. Eventually I stopped the song and instructed them how to sing the end of the song: three Jambo Sannas followed by Jambo, all in unison instead of echo. We practiced that once, and then I returned to the song for a few more lines. When it was time to end the song, I told the students, and by the second Jambo Sanna, they were all singing the coda together. | |
| Find the Beat Game | Play various songs on the laptop, get students to "find" the beat |
| Because I didn't spend time talking about the ukulele as much with the first time, I wanted to try this little experiment that I've been meaning to try for the last few years. I started playing a familiar song (Teaching Peace, which the students have heard from their Wednesday assemblies), and I encouraged the students to try to clap to the beat. Some students were clapping to the start of the song
measures, some clapped to the beat, some on the 1st and 3rd beats, and that was all fine to me. I then started clapping to the start of each measure, and counting in four, in order to illustrate that there were four beats per measure.
I don't really have a good way of explaining where measures start and end, and so I thought that it would have been simpler to just show students the start of measures, and hope that the students simply develop a feel of when they start, based on the music. I've mentioned to the students in the past that the most important number in music is 4, and so convincing them where measures started and where beats lie in Teaching Peace was pretty easy; they had no reason to disagree. The next song I tried was "Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka" - much faster, but still in 4. Not bad. I then switched to the Minute Waltz - a song that many of the students recognized, but not in 4. This is also a very fast song, and so I had them simply focus on the beats rather than the start of the measure. I then switched over to the Skater's Waltz (much slower), and that was easier for the students to find the beat. I then had the students try to find the start of each measure; this took a little bit of time, and so I had to have the students simply follow me as I took a step for each 1st beat of a measure. I then asked them to count the beats in each measure, and the students seemed surprised that there were only 3! The next song I played for them was the Star Spangled Banner - another song that the students recognized (and to which some students sang along). This was another song in 3, and probably it was a song that convinced the students that songs in 3 were common. Finally, I moved to one last song - Take Five. I love using this song, since elementary school students, even today, recognize the song, even though they don't know why. I asked the students to find a beat, which was a little hard for them, so I helped them out here. I then asked them to tell me how many beats per measure there were. I got a lot of different answers here, and so I pointed out where the start of each measure was. When the students exclaimed that there were 5 beats per measure, many of them were curiously surprised; even those learning music on their own didn't encounter songs that were in 5. | |
| We Shall Not Be Moved | Teach song, zipper into the song |
| Much like in previous years, I always like to talk a little bit about Martin Luther King before singing the song, and so we took about 3 minutes to talk about the following Monday holiday, its significance, and the work of MLK. We also talked about freedom train, and then I started singing the song, with the ukulele in hand. I sang the song twice - with the second time being a variation ("when we work together….").
I like to use Dan Zanes' variation of this song; it's easy for the students to learn and sing. And, it translates easily to ukulele. After the second iteration, I asked the students to think of things that they have done that was worth celebrating. At that point, I also had the lyrics with the first and 3rd lines blanked out (with a bare underline) projected on the screen. This was my way of encouraging the students to try to fill in the blanks. In the first class, the students certainly provided ideas that were fun to sing, but they didn't work all that well with the song semantically. As a result, for the second class, I spent a little bit of time talking about how MLK Day was also the National Day of Service - and so, I asked the class to think of times when they helped someone else. That led to more appropriate ideas for the song. | |
The next time I teach the class, I'll play for the students We Shall Not Be Moved by Sweet Honey In The rock - it's dramatically different, and hopefully gives the students a bit of perspective how music, paritcularly the same song, can take on different forms.
I had Juba prepared for the class, lyrics and all, with a clapping game to go along with it. I'll plan on using it during the next class.
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