Teaching Notes, 2nd grade, 20130214

Yes, today was Valentine's Day, and that meant doing something related to the holiday. It was also the last day before a 4-day President's Day weekend, and my classes were having a joint party during what normally woud be the 2nd class' music time. And so, I decided to enlist the help of the other docent and combine both classes into one session. Crazy, huh? Adding to the madness was the fact that I wanted to do a lot of movement-based activities (inspired by a V-Day activity that I've done before). Fortunately, next door to one of the classrooms was an empty room, and it provided just enough space to hold about 50 kids.

Tritsch Tratsch Polka	Lead students into room with song
I couldn't be sure that both rooms' worth of students were going to appear (1) at the same time, and (2) in an orderly fashion, and so when one class' students showed up, I started playing the song, and I asked the students to copy my movements. About a minute into the song, the other students came in, and I simply asked them to join at the end of the line. I would move roughly to the music, and the kids giggled as they followed me around the room. I've done this before in other past classes, but never with 50 students. In an activity like this, the students typically start sliding closer and closer to the middle of the circle, constricting the space; as a result, near the end of the song I could hardly move if I wanted to keep a semi-symmetric circle.
Heel, Toe, Down The Line	Teach Chant/Dance
This was an activity that I've used the past few years around Valentine's Day, and so I was pretty much obligated to use it today. We talked about how it was Valentine's Day (no secret, plus the students had their party afterwards), and I asked the students what responses would they give if they were asked "Would you be my valentine?" Of course, the answers were "yes" and "no", and so I asked them to pretend that they were travelling around the world; first stop: Germany. I then had them practice saying "Ja" and "Nein". Monosyllabic non-English words always seem to resonate with the kids. It was time to introduce the movement, and so I had the students follow what I was doing with my right foot - heel down, followed by toe down. At this point, I needed the help of the other docent, and we illustrated the turnaround when saying "Would you be my valentine". When it was time to practice "Maybe ja or maybe nein", I didn't show the jump quite yet; I wanted to have the students get used to the chant. (We didn't sing quite yet - we only were chanting at this point.) Finally, we illustrated the jump, and the kids loved it. Next, it was time to pair everyone up. The students were already in a circle, and so I simply walked around the room and designated pairs of adjacent students. Second graders already are a bit squeamish about "pairing up", and so I had to remind them that even though this was a Valentine's Day activity, you could always say "no" or "nein" to the question. We probably spent about 2 minutes trying to get everyone paired up, but we then got the students doing the chant and movements. When the students jumped, they all burst out in gleeful laughter, as they realized that they suddenly had a new partner. We did it a few more times, and then I started to sing instead of chant, hoping that some students would follow my vocal lead (some did). After each iteration, I gave the students time to laugh and recollect themselves, but I gradually shortened that time after each iteration, trying to get them to maintain a steady rhythm. I never was able to reduce the delay between iterations to zero. After a few more iterations, we all sat down. I had the students point to where they started at, and many were astounded at how far away they had moved over the course of the song.
How Do You Dootee	Teach chant and movement
It was time to visit another place in the world, and so I had the students fly over to the only place that was both a country and a continent - "Australia!" someone shouted. I asked the students how people say "hello" in Australia - no one could come up with "G'Day", and so we practiced saying it as a group. I also asked the students what words were used to form "G'Day", and none could come up with them. That allowed me to explain how Australian people still spoke English - they just sometimes use different words or pronounce things a little differently. At this point, I jumped right into the chant, and I had the students repeat the first line. We then talked about the second line, and what it meant, as it was again another illustration of words that had a different meaning in Australia. I then had the students repeat the last two lines after me. We put it all together, and then I had them prepare for the walk: I had the students look for another place around the room, and during the last line, they walked to that other area. With 50 kids, there is always going to kids fighting for spots, and so I had to make it clear that students were to walk, and they were to take a nearby location if where they wanted to go was occupied. We practiced this for a bit, and then I decided to add more to the activity. I had the students hold their hands at just under shoulder height and move their hands back on the beat, as if the students were clapping with their neighbors. Getting the students to do this consistently was pretty difficult, as it also required that the students needed to be pretty evenly spaced around the circle - something that is nearly impossible to do after their move. Even more difficult is to get the students to cross their arms during line #2 - an add-on that was taught to me when I took the Sanna Longden workshop that introduced this activity to me. That probably wasn't the most effective time spent.
Sasha	Teach dance and words
We were off to our third location - this time, Russia. We practiced how to say "Hello" in Russian a few times. Then, we practiced counting to three; I had prewritten on the board "Ras", "Dva", "Tri", and I had the students repeat them after me. I then also had them say "Sasha", and we talked about how it was a nickname for either Alexander or Alexandra - thus, everyone could be Sasha. "Sasha" is a clapping dance, and rather than try to frame it, I simply had the other docent demo the clapping with me. After doing that twice, I had all of the students pair up again, and we all practiced the clapping. That was pretty straightforward and successful. What was not as successful was teaching the next part of the dance, which was basically an arm-in-arm circle for two measures, followed by another arm-in-arm circle in the other direction. I sang loudly the music while doing the dance, which pretty much sent the kids into a bit of a frenzy when they tried it. By this point, we were running out of time, and while we were able to practice the entire sequence a few times, we didn't have enough time to (1) search for another partner (which was part of the dance), nor (2) sing/dance/clap to the music.

We had already exceeded 40 minutes at this point, and the teachers had to get the students to the party. However, I think we covered enough of Sasha to revisit it again with minimal memory decay.

The near-empty room worked out really well, and I think I'll have to use it again; with 50 students (and the desks and chairs moved to the walls) there was just enough room without it feeling crowded; I think with 25 students, even with the desks in place, it should be perfectly fine. I did have other dances/movement activities to do, including Longer the Faster, as well as another revisiting of Syncopated Cyril. I also know that the 2nd class loves the Donut Song, and so I had planned variants of Turkey In The Straw for the kids. We'll have to cover that the next time I'm teaching.

Teaching Notes, 2nd grade, 20130131

I've come to realize that with the every-other week schedule, you have to really pick and choose what songs to extend/recap between sessions, since there are only so many classes that you have. Also, if you want to have the kids perform something, you have to prep them months in advance.

Last year, we had a spring sing where nearly all of the docent-led classes sang a few songs for prospective parents. The event last year was in early June, and it's likely that it'll be in early June this upcoming year again. So, each class, I'm now hoping to introduce a new song to see if it sticks enough for a June performance.

We Shall Not Be Moved	Play Sweet Honey version, then review song
Two weeks ago, we had covered We Shall Not Be Moved, using the Dan Zanes version. However, this time I wanted to play for them a different version of the song, to expose them to the possibility of different versions of known songs. So, as the students congregated on the colored carpet, I started playing the song. No student initially recognized what they were hearing (and many were chattering away), so I had to stop the song, ask the students to be completely quiet, and I played the song again. I asked the students to raise their hand if they knew the title of the song, and about 5 students for each class did. When it was revealed to the others what the song was, I restarted the song from the start, and I sang along to the recording. At this point, I asked the students if they remembered what the song was about, and I received reasonable answers (for 2nd graders). In the first class, I detoured a bit and told them that they had recently sung (in assembly) a song that had the same background (60s civil rights' movement), and then I started singing (with the ukulele) We Shall Overcome. Immediately, many of the students sang long with me, and we finished (one iteration) of the song. We then talked a little bit about the meaning of We Shall Overcome. We then sang again We Shall Not Be Moved; the variations that I chose were "When we play ukulele….", followed by "When we clap together". I had put down the ukulele and started clapping for the second variation; during that time, I quietly took out the guitar, which was met by some scattered oohs. I then followed up with another iteration using "When we play guitar…." which worked perfectly.
Guitar vs Ukulele	Compare the two instruments
The students have seen a guitar before, so rather than spend time talking about the instrument, I immediately asked the students to compare the two. We went around the circle, and I received many good observations, from size to color, to string composition, to string count, etc. Not immediately offered was an observation about how the instruments sounded, and so I strummed the two in order to elicit a comparison from the students. I had the students repeat "bigger is lower" and "smaller is higher", reminiscent of the Blow Bang Twang presentation that we had brought to the school two years ago. Just as I had done with the ukulele a few weeks ago, I walked around the circle of students and allowed the students to strum the guitar. We then talked a bit about how it felt, and plenty of students reproted that the strings were harder, vibrated more, or tickled fingers more than the ukulele.
Teaching Peace	Review the song
I knew that the students had sung Teaching Peace during past assemblies, and so I told the students that with a guitar, we could now sing songs that were more complex, like this one. I didn't tell the students in advance what song it was - I simply dove into it, and the students sang along to the chorus. However, I discovered that the students didn't really know the stanza very well; in fact, I ended up having the students echo me in the chorus, and they were unaware of the partial echo for two of the stanza lines. We only sang that one stanza, and we finished with the chorus again. At ths point, I wanted to review the terms "chorus" and "stanza", and indeed most of the students needed to be reminded what those terms meant. We spent a bit of time talking about the chorus and stanzas as they showed up in Teaching Peace, and I ended up drawing a chart filled with lyric snippets in order to illustrate how the song kept bouncing from chorus to stanza and back again. "It's a pattern", exclaimed one student, and indeed, we all came to the conclusion that we were looking at an ABABA pattern with Teaching Peace (through two stanzas).
Oh My Goodness Look At This Mess	Teach song via echo, but with lyrics
Oh My Goodness is one song that I might decide to use for the spring sing, assuming that the students can learn the song and have fun singing it. It is indeed a fun song with fun lyrics, but it certainly isn't a song that the students are likely to have heard in the past. And so, I started off simply singing the chorus before displaying the lyrics for the chorus. We then sang through the chorus in line-by-line echo, and then we sang it all together. Next, I sang through the first stanza (some tried to echo me, but I had to remind them to just listen at this juncture), and then I had the students sing together the chorus, again displayed for all to see. We continued this for one more stanza, and ended with singing the chorus. At this point, I asked the students what was the chorus, and plenty of students picked it out. They were also able to identify the two stanzas. And so, I displayed the song with three stanzas, but with a marker for the chorus instances in between the stanzas. I mentioned to them that typically song lyrics are printed with only the first iteration of the chorus, since the chorus lyrics usually don't change. We then sang through the song.
Hole in the Bottom of the Sea	Immerse students, with printed lyrics
For the first class, I had a few minutes left, and so I wanted to try another song that could potentially become a good song for the spring sing. I had printed lyrics to Hole In the Bottom of the Sea so that I could reveal from the bottom to the top the different items (hole, log, etc.). We got through 5 iterations of this aggregation song, but ultimately the students weren't really following well, and so I stopped there. That was a bit of a disappointment, since I've covered this song in past classes (in a different school) with really good results. Perhaps I rushed it a little, and didn't give students much background to the song before embarking on it. Oh well.

Today was the first day when my first class had an unusually difficult time staying focused. There was a substitute teacher in the room, and that indeed didn't help the situation. But, I had to stop the class multiple times in order to get the students to quiet down and pay attention - something that I rarely had to do for that class in the past, let alone stop multiple times.

The second class ended with yet another rendition of the Donut Song, as requested by the students. I'll have to try to find another alternative with the same tune (Turkey in the Straw); hopefully I can dig up something amusing to them. In two weeks, when I teach again, it will be Valentine's Day, so I'll have to try to use some sort of activity that will be relevant to the holiday but won't send the students down the river of squeamishness.

I have yet to cover the "Find The Beat" game with the 2nd class; I'll have to find time to do that. I did have Tuwe Tuwe ready again, along with How Do You Dootee. Assuming that I do have the students moving around in two weeks, How Do You Dootee might be something that I could have the students try when they're already out of their seats.