Teaching Notes, 20130911

It's been two weeks because of the alternating schedule, and so I was really itching to get back into the classroom. The other docent had reviewed Oats Peas Beans, and introduced Five Little Monkeys, Rain Rain Go Away, and I Can Sing A Rainbow. I want to make it a point to bridge activities from the previous week while still roughly following the general K lesson plan since the 3rd K class is also roughly following the plan.

Unlike last week, I deputized the other parent volunteers to getting nametags out to everyone once we were all in a circle. Now, about getting into a circle...

Come And Follow Me	Lead students in the song and mimic activity
Similar to the last time I taught, the first class was already on the colored mat, and I was hoping to end this activity in a circle. And so, I told the students that I would tap students on their shoulder, at which time they were to follow me. I remembered that the first class students were a little particular about being in a particular favorite spot in line, so I reminded the class that it didn't matter how they were following me - just that it was important to follow me or a fellow student that was following me. So that I maximized my time on the perimeter of the carpet, I tried to tap a bunch of students closer to the middle of the bunch as I proceeded to sing the song. The song went predictably well - I went from airplane arms, to tiny steps, to hopping, to walking backwards, etc., and the kids had a fun time with it. Once I had everyone around the mat reasonably well, I stopped the song, and I had the students sit down. The second class of course starts with the kids outside, and so it was easier to get the students in a line. However, the students, when coming back in from recess, are carrying snack bags, and so I had to make sure that they had a good place to drop them off.
What's Your Name?	Get students to sing their name in sol-mi
I first sang to the students "Hello everyone, what's my name?" in sol-mi-sol-mi-sol-la-sol. I didn't expect the kids to respond back in sol-mi, and I had forgotten to instruct the other parents (who were busy handing out name tags) to model the response in sol-mi. As a result, the students simply shouted my name. I also asked the class if they remembered the names of the other parent volunteers. I then went around the circle singing-asking what their name was, and I asked the students to try singing the response. Few students responded in song unless I reminded them to do it, and while I got to hear how students pronounced their names (and also noting that a few students decided to provide names of siblings instead) and I sang their names back (e,g. "Hello [name]"), this took a lot of time. :/ For the second class, I didn't ask their names, and fortunately the parent volunteers had the nametags distributed quickly, allowing me to simply go around the circle and sing "Hello [name]", expending far less time.
I Can Sing Up High	Explore high and low sounds, sounds, and then immerse students into the song
I asked the students if they brought their instrument - nobody in the first class really answered, while a few students in the second class shouted that their voice was their instrument. I had the students then put their fingers around various parts of their head/throat/face while they sang high and low sounds. We talked a bit about the vibrations that they felt, and how sound always meant vibration and that you had to have something moving in order to make sound. After having the students voice some exaggerated high and low sounds, I had the students stand up, and I had the students mirror me as I walked through the song, one line at a time. I had the students echo me one more time, after which we tried singing the song together once, reasonably successfully. I tried having the students sing through again a bit faster, and I started losing the students pretty quickly. Typically with older students I can make the speedup a bit of a game, but for the Kinders, I didn't feel like I could push them to go any faster. For the first class, I also had the students make a buzzing sound, passing it as just another sound that involved vibration. But that allowed me to re-introduce the Bee Bee Bumblebee chant, which we did a few times. I wanted to get this in since I'd use it later. However, I forgot to do this for the 2nd class! :O
Oats Peas Beans	Review song, teach all stanzas
To the tune of the song, I asked the students to sit down "e.g. [name] and [name] and [name] sit down", which they all did pretty quickly. I then had the students, now all seated, sing the chorus of Oats Peas Beans. After singing, I then passed around a container of Oats, followed by packages of Peas, (red) Beans, and Barley. After Oats, I asked the students what came next, and they roughly were able to sing the appropriate food. While the packages were still making their way around the room, I asked the students to sing with me the first stanza, which they already knew. I then asked the students whether or not, based on planting seeds whether or not we would have our crops, and that allowed me to continue singing the next stanzas. Students who had viewed the package of Barley were asked to stand up with me while we continued to sing (or move) to the song. By the time we had sung the chorus after the 3rd stanza, all of the students had passed around the Barley, which meant that everyone was standing and ready to re-sing the whole song in entirety. I think the students had a good time with this; they appear to be very comfortable singing the song, and they had no problem singing (with movements) the other stanzas.
Rhythm Sticks	Introduce sticks, have students echo me
Before the sticks were passed out to the students, I demonstrated how to hold the sticks in a ready position with my own sticks - one stick resting near each shoulder. This makes it of course impossible for someone to make a sound with them, which was part of the purpose. For the first class, I also told them that they could also keep the sticks on the ground in front of them, but I would later discover that doing so meant more delays when getting the kids ready to play - and the motion of picking up the sticks always invites the urge to click them. While the students were receiving their sticks, I sang variations of "10 Little Indians" (e.g. "10 little kinders", "10 little rhythm sticks", "pick up sticks and put them on your shoulder"). First, I had the students click their sticks once, on my cue. After doing this a few times, I had the students try rubbing the sticks together; most students had a ridged stick, which allowed for some additional textures or vibrations to be felt. I then had the students practice mixing clicks and rubs, giving two beats' worth of time to the rub. I then had the students keep a beat slowly while singing Bee Bee Bumblebee (for which the 1st class of students chanted along). Next, I had them chant while mixing beats and rubs. Finally, I wanted to get students thinking about rests (without using that term), and so I had the students alternate clicks with simply raising their arms in the air (cued by the word "up"). With the click-up pattern, we then chanted Bee Bee one more time. I thought that the students did pretty well with the sticks - they, for the most part, followed my lead, and the chants definitely helped. One thing that I wanted to note - I had sticks that were bright red, while all of the other students' sticks were blue. That seemed to help a lot, as the students who were watching me could follow my sticks - they didn't blend in with the sea of blue. Also, I would usually wait for near silence (100% silence is hard to achieve with kinders) before moving onto the next step with the sticks, and keeping the sticks on shoulders definitely helped. We collected the sticks while I sang the same songs.

When we had all of the sticks gathered up, the recess bell rang for the first class, so I simply altered my song to ask the students to line up. For the second class, we sang "Goodbye My Friends", just as we did two weeks ago.

I thought the class went well - certainly we had some early hiccups with the first class, and even though the first class appears to be generally rowdier than the second class, I thought they all did well near the end of the class - particularly (surprisingly) with the sticks. I had a fair amount of backpocket items in case I ran out of things to do, but fortunately I didn't have to dig in there. Looking back, I didn't do the usual constant changing of activities, but I didn't sense that the students were disinterested at any time. Props and instruments definitely do help. :)"

Teaching Notes, Kinder, 20130828

We're back! And yes, as you can see from the title of this post, I'm teaching Kindergarten this year! This was somewhat unexpected, but for good reason; our school is now receiving professional music educators for grades 1-5, leaving Kindergarten for volunteer docents like myself. I also have the added bonus of teaching my own daughter this year, who also started Kindergarten.

This year's schedule is going to be similar to last years' schedule, in the sense that I am co-teaching with another volunteer docent, and for the majority of the year, we will be alternating weeks. However, for the first week, both of us co-taught the first class. We roughly broke the class so that the other docent started, while I finished, and I'll talk about the entire day's activities.

Also a little unusual for teaching two classes this year, we have a break in the middle. The first class is right before morning recess, while the second class is after morning recess. That obviously leaves a lot of time to re-prepare class. It also meant that for the second class, the students could line up and march in. In addition, both classes are in the same classroom, which certainly should make set-up a lot easier.

Hello My Friends	Sing Hello [name] to each of the kids, and encourage the students to sing along
We wanted to be able to welcome the students to their first music class and also get familiarized with their names. In order for this to work, I had prepared name tags (on lanyards) for all of the kids. However, distributing them, even with another parent helper in the room, was quite challenging, and we consumed about 3-4 minutes just handing them out at the start of each class. Not helping was the fact that many of the lanyards were tangled. For the first class, with the lanyards distributed, we sang "Hello [name], hello", and filled in the name of each child. In some cases, we couldn't see the name tag, and so we had to ask the rest of the class to help us - that actually got some of the children to sing along and figure out what exactly what we were doing. During the second class, we had them march into the room, which actually took some work, as the students brought in their snack bags from recess and broke up the line when dropping off their bags. Anyhow, while students didn't all sing along, I think that most, if not all, at least had the general tune etched in their mind. That would be useful later on.
Do Re Mi	Teach full-body solfeggi, immerse into song
To start off, we asked the students to help stretch out, and then we had the students follow us in body solfege, from a low Do to a high Do. Many of the students already knew the Solfege scale, although some just moved along. I didn't have a lot of expectation that the students would really follow in tune, as many Kindergarteners actually cannot sing a full octave with control, but that didn't matter much, as we just wanted the students to move, and to hear the solfege notes - especially if they were new to them. We did try to take the students back down the scale, but few actually sang with us at that point. We then broke into the Do Re Mi song (sung twice). The students sort of kept up a bit - many knew the song (even if they couldn't recite the 8 notes of the scale). Again, Do Re Mi is difficult for kindergarteners to match pitch, but at least most of them kept up. In the second class, we introduced "Piano" and "Forte", and we led the students while singing with the different volume levels.
Head Shoulders Knees Toes	Immerse students into motions and song
HSKT is obviously a pretty classic song for kids, and even when we were just asking students to shout out what body part we were pointing to (e.g. Head), many of the students remarked that they knew some sort of song that involved those body parts. Great segue - we then jumped right into the song. We actually ended up singing a variant of HSKT that I never heard before - one where after the 2nd line, "I know how to find my head, shoulders, knees and toes" is sung instead of "Eyes and ears and mouth and nose". It seemed to work, although it didn't seem like most of the students had heard that particular variation.
Oats Peas Beans	Teach students to chant part of the song
I would end up teaching the remainder of the class. Taking a page straight out of the suggested Kinder lesson plan, I asked the students if they had a garden - of course lots of students raised their hands, and then I asked if any planted strawberries. I then had the students all sing out in sol-mi "I like strawberries", and then I sang-asked them (also in sol-mi) if they liked various other kinds of produce - blueberries, apples ("Who has an apple tree?"), peaches, green beans, peas, etc. I then asked "Who likes oatmeal?", and of course lots of students answered back. I then asked (without singing) how does one plant oatmeal in a garden. I expectedly received a lot of confused looks and giggles, and so I talked about oats, and how they grew in a way similar to wheat. I'm not sure if that made any ore sense for the children, except I think they understood that you grow oats from a plant, and yet you eat oatmeal, not straight oats. I then had the students echo me in saying Oats, Peas, Beans. This grabbed the attention of the entire class pretty quickly, and it certainly helps that all of these words are monosyllabic. I proceeded to teach them a new word about another grain called "Barley", and it took a little more effort for the students to recite "Barley". After having the class echo me, word by word, the four foods, I then started chanting them one at a time without waiting for an echo, albeit very slowly. I also wanted the students to follow my arm/hand motions, and so I tried doing a little tap-clap-etc. motion to get the kids' arms moving as well. I realized during the first class that while you can do single motions to keep a beat, it helps to do a double-eighth rhythm for Barley. I wanted to then break into a chant of "Oats Peas Beans and Barley grow", and in order to do that, I had to (1) go back to a single beat rhythm, and (2) slow it down. I did have the students echo each of the four lines (while still keeping a beat with arms), and the students seemed to keep up ok. We then chanted together all 4 lines, after which I asked "do you know how these things grow?" Students would nearly unanimously say "I don't know" (or similar), and so we chanted again. I had the students chant one more time, after which I told them that next week perhaps we'd explore this a little more.
Show Me	Teach students the response
I typically spend the first day of class doing a lot of little exercises to see what is most effective in capturing the students' attention, and Show Me is something that almost always works with Kinders. I first sang "Show Me", and then I had the students practice echoing me before advancing to the next phrase. I did this using the standard words (door/window/floor), and the kids seemed to be amused - some thought it was a game.
I Like You	March to the song, insert actions
With the kids sitting on the mat, I wanted them to make a circle around the outside of the mat. For the first class, I asked the students to make a circle - I forgot that that's an evolving skill eventually learned in Kindergarten. So, I had groups of students move over to the outside of the mat. (For the second class, I gave clearer instructions about who moving to where.) I had the students all held hands (no squeamishness in Kindergarten!), and then I asked them if they knew which way was towards the right. I actually had little expectation that everyone would correctly identify the desired direction, so I walked around the inside of the circle, telling students which way they'd be going; it was important to make a lap around the circle so that two opposite ends knew they were going in opposite directions. Part of this exercise was to get the students used to marching in a circle, and so I had the students practice taking a step to the right, on my vocal command. We took all deliberate, single steps initially, and after I got an easy rhythm going, I then had them march to a beat. I then started the song. After the first verse, I then told the students to watch me as we continued to march - I then sang "We can clap", of course, accented with a clap. I then proceeded to add jump, stomp and hop into the mix, and in each case, the students were able to follow along just fine. Again, this seemed like a game to them
Show Me II	Add different lyrics
At this point, this was a great time to add in another variation to Show Me (face, ceiling place), which worked out well. During the second class, the students were still sitting, so I had them point down to their space, at which time I reminded them that underneath them was indeed their space. This allowed the students to all sit down. This was also in stark contrast to what happened to the first class - when I asked them to sit down, more than half the class scrambled for a seemingly random yet favorite spot on the mat, and of course sometimes more than one kid favored the same particular square. You can imagine what happened there.
Itsy Bitsy Spider	Talk about sounds, sing song in various ways
I asked the students what sounds they heard in the morning, and unlike in past years when I've asked this, most of the students gravitated around sounds made by people. It took a little bit of time to get them to talk about animal sounds (I should have asked if anyone had a pet), and eventually someone mentioned a bird (yay!). We tweeted as a class the tiny sounds of the bird, but I had a bit of a difficult time to get the kids to suggest something that produces a low sound. I steered the conversation towards a train (we all made appropriate noises), and then I asked the students which one was a higher sound. Now, most of the students chose the train instead of the bird, and I suspect that the students focused more on volume levels rather than pitch. I didn't have a lot of time to go into pitch differences, and so I simply moved onto talking about spiders. In the first class, we actually talked a bit about bees, and I interjected the Bee Bee Bumble Bee chant, but after chanting it once (ending with "you are out!"), it seemed like such a nonsequitor that I moved on quickly, and I didn't even bring this up in the second class. We sang the spider song, and I asked the students what sounds does a spider make. Spiders, as many kids pointed out, are pretty quiet, so we re-sang the song quietly. I asked the students how the song would be if the spider was really tiny, and then I let them in a rendition as if we were all chipmunks. Spiders come in all sizes, and I asked the students if any had ever seem a huge spider. A few said that they did, and then I led them in a rendition of the song with a low booming voice. (I didn't point out that it was "low" - I just sang it in an exaggerated, low voice.) I then asked the students what the song would be like if we sang about a very fast spider, or a nearly motionless spider, and we sang the song with different tempos.
Goodbye My Friends Goodbye	Immerse students into the song
It was time to go, and so I told the students that I wanted to sing a goodbye song. Of course, this is particular song has the same melody as Hello My Friends, and so once I started singing it, many of the students tried singing along. It was good to see so many of the kids try the song out without having heard the lyrics before.

That was a lot of fun. There are still some additional introductory activities that I would like to try out with the students before really settling into a good lesson rhythm (no pun intended), but with every-other-week classes for me, it will be another two weeks before I get to teach again.

Behavior-wise, Kindergarteners are far easier to teach than the older grades. Granted, the students still chat on the side, and sometimes they get into mini-spats with each other, usually centered around where one is supposed to sit, but it's a lot easier to recapture their attention. There were some kids who, initially weren't really participating much, but an extra smile here and there oftentimes works well to break the ice and get those students to contribute to the fun.

I'll be sure to break out I Can Sing Up High during my next class. Hopefully that will serve as an easy way to introduce the concept of pitch to the students

As for the name cards, we will definitely have to figure out a better way to distribute these, or perhaps we'll have some of the parent volunteers distribute them with class already underway.