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.