Teaching Notes, 20130523

It's roughly two weeks before the spring sing, and so I had the task of trying to review the Spring Sing songs without making it seem like a chore. You can't really have a class that is 100% review, and so I had to reach back into past years' archives to introduce some material new to the students.

The World Is Big and the World Is Small (Ella Jenkins)	Lead students into class in song
Before I led the students in, I asked them to split themselves up with the boys on one side and the girls on the other. I had used a row of chairs (upside down so that kids wouldn't sit on them) to divide the room. (It's fortunate that the room is large enough to do this; I couldn't have pulled this off using the standard classroom.) Then, I started playing on ukulele the chorus of the song one time through as the students walked in, and then I started simply singing the chorus while playing. With most of the students in, I then taught the students the chorus; I did have the chorus lyrics projected, and so I had the students echo me two lines at a time. On one side of the board, I had written "Boat", "Plane", "Dance", "Game", and I then had the students echo, one line at a time, the stanza of the song, using these words. On the other side of the board, I had written "Bus", "Train", "Song", "Name", and again, I had the students echo me. The students picked this part of the song up very easily, and so after we finished the song (with another echoing of the chorus), I had the students sing the entire song (chorus in unison, stanza in echo, chorus in unison).
Oh My Goodness	Review song, sing in roles
I started off simply by singing the chorus of the song, and the students chimed in. During the Spring Sing, I wanted to introduce the song myself, much like the recording, where I would sing two lines of the chorus, while the class finished with the last two lines (followed by a repeat of the chorus). I explained to the students that this was one way to set the pace of the song as well as the starting pitch, and that seemed to make the students pay a little more attention than usual. The big twist I added today was that I had the students answer each other. The first stanza went to the girls. Rather than have a chorus in between every stanza, I had the boys follow the girls with the second stanza immediately. The original song has a short interjection-type line after the last line of each stanza, and I had the boys interject after the girls; the girls would also interject after the boys completed their stanza before everyone fell back to the chorus. Removing roughly every other chorus seemed to make the song flow a bit better (not to mention be less boring for the students), and the responses seemed to make the students pay attention more when they weren't singing and waiting for the other half of the class to finish. At the end of the song, the students repeated the last line while being prompted by myself. I also added a four-clap to the very end, which hopefully gives the students something to think about as they are finishing the song. I do have to remember to clap myself (and at the right times) during the singing of the regular chorus - something that I'll have to work on over the next week.
Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers	Revisit and review song
By this time, the students had spent time singing the entire song, and with nothing particularly new to add to the song at this point, I simply had the students review the song. The students still had a hard time with the various tongue twister words in the chorus, so we spent a little extra time repeating and covering the changing-word chorus. We also emphasized the extended (fermata'ed) note near the end, as well as the ending line itself. In all, though, we probably only spent enough time to sing through the song twice.
Old King Glory on the Mountain	Teach, have kids play the marching game
It had been a while since I had the class do some sort of significant movement, and with a dividing line (group) of chairs in the middle of the class, it was natural to have some sort of dance around an object. OKG features a very short song and a fun activity, and so I used it as a lighthearted way to end the day after a class that was mostly review. When getting the students in a circle and marching, I realized how infrequently I had the students moving in a circle - something that I used to do nearly every other class when I first started teaching. (I also had a lot more room back then.) I had to do a little bit of remedial stepping to the beat clockwise, and then we started the activity/song. Students had a pretty fun time with this - especially those who were picked late and figured out that they'd have more fun trying to avoid me as I counted "1, 2, 3". In both classes, we were left with some students and they were declared the winners, being left on top of the "mountain" of chairs.

For a class that was mostly review, this actually went ok - I still had a mixture of new and old material. The next time I'll teach is going to be the dress rehearsal for the Spring Sing; although the kids sort of understood the split roles today, I know that we still have a lot of work to do.