Peter and the Wolf, 20140321

The school where I teach organizes a school wide “Art and Science Day” each year, and typically there is a large kickoff for the school lasting about an hour.  I had originally scheduled a presentation of Peter and the Wolf to be led by a roving docent from Music for Minors for all of the 1st graders, but about a month before A&S Day was scheduled, the presenter had to cancel.  But, that got me wondering - why not try it?

I didn’t want to just have the students just sitting and watching the story, and so I, along with another MfM docent at the school, prepped 36 large slides roughly the size of 20x30 foam boards with pictures of the characters, instruments, and storyboards of the story.  At the start of the 1 hour period, the 1st graders were instructed to form several groups (2-3 students each) and color the slides as they saw fit.  Correctness was optional; I wanted to simply use something that the kids worked on as part of the story

When the students gathered in the room that we had, we quickly reordered the slides while I talked about the characters and the instruments.  I also had a violin on hand (and a borrowed flute and piccolo from one of the teachers) and I demonstrated Peter’s theme.  I then enlisted the help of the 1st grade teachers, who came up to the front to help me animate the characters of the story.

We used a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfM7Y9Pcdzw&feature=kp) of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and had it playing on one wall, next to the rest of us performing the story.  There were times when I would ask the students what they were hearing, and if they remembered the instrument-character connection.

The students seemed to really enjoy seeing their work in motion.  Some would exclaim in wonder when they saw the picture that they worked on.  And, the students got a kick out of watching their teachers perform.

I don’t know if I’ll have another chance to do something like this, but I have given some thought as to how to refine this.  I relied on the video to tell the story, and while it’s rich of media showing the instruments being played, it is also about 30 minutes long, which is long for 1st graders, even with their teachers performing in front of them.  I’d have to memorize the story, but after listening to it for about 50 times while preparing for this event, I think I have a head start.  :)

Teaching Notes, 20140319

I had a bit of a breakthrough last week where I was able to keep the first class engaged reasonably well through the entire lesson by changing the activity over and over again, and this time I was planning to do a bit more of the same. The students are still a little bit behind in material covered compared to the first class, so I had every reason to keep the foot on the gas for that first class. It was also very nice outside, and it had been a while since we last had a dance, so I also planned for some outside time.

Similar to last week, I’ll cover the first class first. Here’s what happened.

Clap Patterns	Have students echo-clap me while they arrive on the carpet
I did this two weeks ago while students were gathering around the carpet, and so I did it again. I started simple (three even claps), but then I definitely threw in some faster eighth notes and some breaks to see if the students could follow, and they did. With most of the students’ attention now with me, I simply started to sing the next song…
Victor Vito	Start singing, get students to clap to rice and beans
The students know this song well now, and so it’s easy to grab their attention just by singing the first few words. The original recording has two quick claps after “rice” and “beans”, and so after we sang through one stanza and chorus, I had the students try clapping after hearing those two words. We only practiced this twice, and then I started singing the second stanza. Less than half of the students clapped in at rice (the first of the two key words), and slightly more than half clapped after “beans”. I also slowed down the song right around those words; had I not, I doubt I would have had many students at all clapping since the word arrives so quickly. We kept this up through the 3rd and 4th stanzas, and similar to the recording, I had slowed down (3rd) or sped up (4th) the tempo. The original recording also lowers the volume when slowing down, which often is an unintended side effect of slowing down with small children; I tend not to want to emphasize that side effect, but I used it anyway to see if the students could be quiet while singing (they could not, for the most part). Anyhow, adding the clapping was enough for the kinders to make them feel that this was something new. It goes to show that you don’t have to extend much in order to keep things fresh with the kindergarteners.
More Clap Patterns	Have students echo-clap me while they arrive on the carpet
I had the students echo-clap again with me, ending with a simple 4-quarter pattern. I instructed the students to not worry about the distinction between claps and knee taps for this exercise; they could choose to do either. I had preprinted a set of sheets, each containing 4 beats’ worth of notes and rests (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5TYy9wcAkr6emplS0JFR0pXVEU/edit?usp=sharing), and I attached via magnet to the board the sheet with four quarter notes. I asked the students what the printing meant, and I actually got a variety of pretty good answers (4 claps, or notes with heads on top, etc.). I emphasized the fact that they were “quarter” notes, and that they were all even. I then replaced the sheet with a sheet of three quarter notes with a quarter rest injected in beat #2, and I asked them again what the weird squiggle was. They remembered that it was some sign for doing nothing, and I asked them how they would show me that they were doing “nothing” (e.g. hands out). Whenever I brought out a new slide, I clapped the rhythm, and then I had the students echo me. I had two more followup slides where the rest moved to beat 3 or 4, and each time we practiced clapping (or tapping) the rhythm. I then told them that I could replace any of the quarter notes or beats with something that took up the same amount of time; I then showed them a sheet with a quarter note, a quarter note, two eighths, and a quarter note. A few students who clearly were taking music (usually piano) classes out of school knew what the other notes were, but I wanted to give the students the chance to describe the differences. Instead of going into the math of dividing a quarter by two, I simply told the students that according to the sheet, I was charged with squeezing two claps in the time-space of one. I called the notes “squishy” notes (I intend on calling them eighths in a later time), and so we practiced this a bit. Most students would clap the eighths as quickly as possible, and to I had to practice with them how to clap two notes evenly in the space of one beat. I then practiced with sheets where I had two pairs of eighths, followed by a sheet of eight eighth notes. Students really liked that last one, and I had a single student who knew what to do clap the pattern for the rest of the class. I had preprinted sheets that combined quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rests, but I felt that we had reached a pretty happy point with the rhythms, and it was time to do something else now. And so, I had the students follow me in a 3-beat pattern (knee tap-clap-clap), followed by a 6-beat pattern. The 6-beat pattern, when echoed, easily gets the students to stop inserting a phantom beat after the 3-beat pattern. With the students now following the 6-beat pattern, I started to sing…
My Bonnie	Sing, keep beat, and add movement
With the kids keeping a 6 (really 3) beat rhythm, I started singing My Bonnie. After we finished, I had to remind the students that it was indeed Bonnie, not some other variant. But, then I told them that they knew the words so well (which they did), that they could play the stand-up game, where on the word “Bonnie”, they were to stand up, and for other words, they were to sit back down. I got a few confused looks, but when I started singing, the kids quickly picked up on how the game worked. The children absolutely loved this game. We played it only one time through, and of course they wanted to do it again, but you have to leave them wanting more, right? (I’m sure I’ll revisit this soon.) It was time to go outside, so next, I asked the students where Bonnie was. The students didn’t quite know how to answer, so I asked them if Bonnie was on the beach (“No!”), or in a car (“No!”). Then, the kids said that Bonnie was somewhere in the Ocean, so I told them it was time to sing and paddle at the same time; I led them, singing and paddling, outside to the usual large circle near the room.
Boanopstekker	Teach movements, and then do the dance
I had the students walking in counter-clockwise, and when we were all around the circle (about two songs’ worth), I had the students spread out as evenly as kindergarteners can. I pointed out that they were walking to the right so long as they were facing the middle of the circle. I had them practice taking 8 shuffles to the right with counting, and then 8 shuffles to the left. I then walked the students through the part of the dance involving the middle (walk in, wave, clap, walk out). At this point, I started playing the music. Rather than try to dance from the very beginning, I let the music go on while I explained to the students to just follow my movements and commands. We then started to dance, and the kids kept up well. The dance involving the middle is more complex than just walking around the perimeter, and there was the risk of students rushing towards the middle of the circle or not doing the motions quickly enough, but the majority of the students kept up just fine. The students seemed to find the dance entertaining, and some did ask to do it again. However, the bell for recess had already rung, and it was time to dismiss the children.

The second class started outside, starting with Boanonpstekker. The students came to the circle from the opposite side, so we started walking towards the left instead of the right. However, the activity was more or less the same for this class compared to the first class. The students seemed to be having plenty of fun outside, so I gave them a bonus activity of Highway Number One, with plenty of review and preparation of course. In order to get the students inside, I had the students first practice singing My Bonnie, and then just like I did with the other class, I managed to get the students to row their way back into the classroom. The remainder of the class included Victor Vito, clapping patterns, and finally My Bonnie with standing up on “Bonnie” just like the first class.

I was happy that I was able to break up arguably one item (echo clapping) into pieces sprinkled around the lesson, and that seems to be an effective way to cover one activity requiring a fair amount of time without boring the kids. I also had roughly the same activities for both classes which certainly made things easy, although I had prepared to bring back the cookie jar for the second class, and introduce Penguins Attention to the first class. But, there’s always next next week!

Teaching Notes, 20140305

Last week’s classes resulted in one very challenging class and one that was easier, and there was a clear difference in the amount of material covered between the two. This time, I had a different strategy - try to cover as much material as quickly as possible with the first class that they missed out on, and then try newer material in the 2nd class. Going back to training, kinders tend to do better when shorter amounts of time are spent on the same topic, and that translates usually to many more different activities.

Similar to last week, I’ll cover the first class first. Here’s what happened.

Clap Patterns	Have students echo-clap me while they arrive on the carpet
The first class tends to slowly drift over to the carpeted area, and this time was no different. I didn’t want to do something big with only a subset of the students ready, and so I did simple echo claps while the students gathered. I started with 4 beat patterns, and mixed in some knee taps with the claps. Then, I moved to a 6-beat frame, and then an 8-beat frame. I wanted to revisit this later, and so when most of the students were on the carpet, I moved to the next activity.
Down By The Sea	Review movements, move to song
Without introducing the song, I started having the students follow me in the motions featured in the song. When we went through them all (except the falling into bed asleep motion), I started the song, and we then followed through with the motions with the song in the background. Just about everyone remembered the song once it started playing, and similar to the past time we did this, the students had a good time with this. Since the first class has a history of being more difficult to control, there was some worry that they’d go a little nutty this early in the music lesson, but the students did a good job containing their over-exuberance, particularly after the song had ended.
1-2-Tie My Shoe	Have students follow in silence, and then with the chant
I started out by doing the motions in silence, and students started trying to follow me. Most eventually figured out what I was doing, and they were saying the chant, although they were also still struggling to keep up. I prefer to use ASL signs for the numbers, and with 1-5 it’s straightforward, but this time, I signed 6-10 using two hands for simplicity. I would later tell the students that they were learning American Sign Language, and I even told them how ASL’s “3” was different from ASL’s “w”. I also end 9-10 with “do it again”, which I also taught in ASL. Eventually, I don’t need to chant anymore, and I continued to sign through the pattern with the students chanting. I end this with replacing the signs with “do it again” with “a big fat hen”, and when I did this, I got a lot of confused looks. I then did 9-10 one more time and then told them “a big fat hen” which of course made them laugh. We ended this activity with one more rendition through the pattern, ending with the big fan hen.
If You’ve Got 1	Review, introduce the very end of the song
Two weeks ago, the students followed me well in learning the movements for this song, but the class was too disruptive for me to try the very last part of the song. This time, after I walked through the students without the recording, I had them practice the very end of the song, including the two responses of 1-2-3/un deus trois. The little bit of French allowed me to inform the students that they knew English, Chinese, Spanish (for some), ASL, and now French. (Students were very happy to point out that they knew Spanish, a language that many know from home but doesn’t really get used much at the school.) With the students prepared, I started the recording, and the students kept up quite well. At the ending of the song I lost probably half the class, but they weren’t distracted by anything; they were still intently trying to hear the song and do the right thing. Yay.
Echo Clapping Revisited	Revisit clapping patterns, and then go into some fixed patterns
I got the students quickly back into echoing 8-beat patterns, and then I had them clap a pattern of 7 knee taps followed by a single clap. I had preprinted some note patterns with some notes with low stems vs. high stems, and I then showed the students a picture of 7 high stem notes (low heads) with an 8th low stem note (high head). I asked the students if anyone saw something different “things” on the page, and students were eager to tell me that the circles were high or low (using an amusing assortment of descriptions). I then walked them through a few different patterns that I had printed on paper. I also had a few patterns with rests, but I could tell that the students were nearing their attention span limit with this activity (possibly because it was already past the 20th minute, or possibly because I already had them do some echo clapping), and so I moved on.
Deep And Wide	Review and eliminate word(s)
I started mimicking the movements and the students very slowly started to follow me. When I had more than half following, I started singing Deep and Wide. The students followed ok; they clearly were starting to lose a bit of focus, but I still had the students try to eliminate “wide”. Similar to the second class during the previous class, students struggled a bit to not sing the words, and in order to emphasize the silence, I had them cover their mouths on “wide”. That seemed to help a bit more. The students nonetheless had fun with the song and the attempt to skip a word. I didn’t extend this any further, and we were able to squeeze two iterations with no “wide” before it was time for recess.

The second class worked a little differently. We started with echo clapping, 1-2 Tie My Shoe, followed by If You’ve Got 1, followed by Deep and Wide. Deep and Wide was a bit more successful compared to the previous time I had taught it to the second class, and we even tried eliminating “river”, which was quite a challenge. The last two activities were new…

My Bonnie	Teach song, get kids to clap in 3s
I started singing the song, and many of the kids immediately started singing along even though I hadn’t taught the song before. After one time through the stanza, I repeated the stanza, but I had the students tap their knees at the first beat of each measure. We sang through the stanza and the chorus with the taps, and then I had the students try to do a tap-clap-clap pattern while singing. This is quite a challenge for students, particularly for the few students who didn’t know the song before, and so I encouraged the students to just worry about the tapping and clapping, and not to worry about the singing. I also had to slow the song down significantly so that the students could keep up with the percussion. br> Next, I had the students count to three as we kept up the tap-clap-clap pattern. I reminded the students that usually we had been counting to 4, and earlier during the echo clapping we had also counted to 6 and 8. However, this time, we were counting to three, and that seemed to click in a bit with the students.
Penguins Attention	Teach songs and movements
This was a fun activity that I learned from a past workshop led by Sanna Longden. It involves a quick call-and-answer chant (one line each), followed by a short, whimsical song. The idea was that the students would follow my motions (which were flapping an arm, leg, etc. like a penguin, or waddling like a penguin), and they had to pay attention each time. Not a lot of students picked up on the song, but they were happy to mimic the motions. I tried to keep the motions not too exaggerated since we still had limited space inside the classroom. I eventually started to choose individual students to be the leader, which worked to a point. The first few motions were copied, but eventually the rest of the class wanted to really get a close look at what the leader-student was doing, and that got a little intimidating for the leader-student. Even when I asked the students to move back, they crept up because at that age, everyone is short! I realized that it was easy for them to follow me because I was so much taller than they were, but to have 24 kindergarteners follow a single one is challenging unless the single one is on an elevated location. Eventually, I had the other parent in the room be the leader so that the students could see what motions were to be done easily and without needing to crowd another little one.

Both classes worked pretty well, and I think it helped that I switched topics so many times. I had forgotten about the need to switch frequently, even if the students were doing well with a particular activity. The frequent changes kept their attention better, and so I’ll have to keep that in mind for future classes. The great thing is that you don’t have to do a whole lot for each activity.

Teaching Notes, 20140219

For today, I wanted to do different things for both classes. The last time I taught, a fire drill eliminated a chance to play with various instruments outside for the first class, and so I wanted to have that first class have the same opportunity. In general, I wanted to also extend a lot of songs/activities that we did in previous sessions, and so I had a bunch of songs ready. However, because I wanted enough time for the instruments, the two classes’ days went very, very differently. I’ll describe the first class’ activities first.

If You’ve Got One (Justin Roberts)	Walk through motions, then move to the song
This song was supposed to be the second activity; I was hoping instead to have the students do motions to a recording of Down By The Sea instead. However, the students were only slowly trickling over to the carpet as they finished their activities and that made it less appealing to simply start Down By The Sea. In hindsight, however, it probably wouldn’t have mattered, and it might have encouraged students to go over to the carpet more quickly. For the first class, I started simply signing 1-2-3-4-5 in ASL (e.g. the “3” involves the thumb), and I was hoping that the students would follow me, but I probably had the attention of only half of the students who were on the mat. As more students trickled in, I started doing the motions as described in the song. Most students are used to seeing “1-2-tie my shoe”, but the actions for this song are clearly different, and so I had some students a little confused here, as I still hadn’t vocalized any instructions. I then told the students what each motion was, preceded by the number for each one. I then spoke the words of the song while having the students do the motions; by this time I had about 75% of the students with me, but it wouldn’t really improve much past that. Finally, I played the song, and the students who were following the spoken instructions were following song pretty well. After the first half of the song, I told the students that they were ready for the “test” portion of the song, which of course was nothing more than the second half and the same set of instructions. I cut the song off after the main stanza ended (“if you’ve got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5”). Had the students been together more, I would have tried to teach them the very end of the song, but I figured that it was time to move onto something else.
Bee Bee Bumblebee	Review Chant, introduce dynamics
I did a quick review of the chant, and most students followed me, although even at this point there were more students interested in chatting away, and I found myself moving students around the carpeted area more frequently than usual. I then wrote “forte” on the whiteboard, and I had the students spell and pronounce the word. I then told the students its meaning, but instead of having the students try out the chant in forte, as they were already pretty loud, I immediately moved to the other side of the board, wrote “piano”, and introduced the term to the students. I then had the students try the chant in piano, and it worked fine until the very end, when the students shouted “out!”. Not sure if this was going to be a big problem, I had them try out chanting in forte, and indeed, they could get even louder, all the way through the end of the chant. I had the students tap knees and clap in order to keep beat, and that was something they did well. But, it was near impossible in order to get the students to chant in piano all the way through, and the more they shouted “out!” when they knew they were supposed to keep quiet, the more giggling they generated. Feeling optimistic, I kept trying to get the students to chant in piano all the way through, and I was unsuccessful. Sensing chaos, I decided to move the class outside…
Here We Go A-Riding On A Train	Review song, add instruments
Amidst the growing chaos, I forgot to review the individual components of Here We Go A-Riding, and so as I led the students out, I simply sang through parts of the song. Similar to two weeks ago for the second class, I had put out instruments in the interior of the large circle outside. Similar to two weeks ago, there was a puddle, but this time the puddle was bigger and I had forgot to instruct the parent-helper to block the puddle so that students wouldn’t be tempted to jump into it, even though there were no instruments near the puddle. I also should have instructed the students to follow me around the outside of the circle; as I walked out, a couple of the students saw the instruments and immediately ran through the circle to pick them up. I quickly reviewed the spoken parts of the song, and like I did with the first class two weeks ago, I had students with certain instruments (e.g. sand blocks, etc.) practice playing their instruments at certain parts of the song. However, I felt that I really rushed it through that I don’t think the students had enough time to make the connection with the instrument. On top of that, it was an extreme challenge to get students to not play their instruments until they were told to pick it up. I was ok with students continuing to play after their part had ended, mainly because doing that would have been that much more difficult, and I didn’t have a lot of time to spare. When it was time to run through the song, the recess bell had rung! However, I did have the students go through the song one time through. There wasn’t time to have students switch instruments, and when I asked just the tambourine players to return their instruments, everyone rushed the box.

As I noted earlier, the second class had a significantly different experience. I kept the class fully indoors, and as the students were walking in, I started playing a recording of “Down By The Sea”. I had the students form a circle around the carpeted area as they entered, and most of the students remembered the song. We went through the entire song, and then I had the students sit down. Here’s the play by play of the rest of the class.

If You’ve Got One (Justin Roberts)	Walk through motions, then move to the song
Similar to the first class, I started signing 1-2-3-4-5 in ASL. The students were more focused than their first class compatriots, however, and so this second class was able to focus more when I started doing motions. We practiced the motions, and then we followed the song with motions. Similar to the first class, I stopped the recording after the end of the first two stanzas, but then I also walked through the end of the song with the students, including 1-2-3 in French. This did elicit some giggles and confusion, especially when practicing how to say “un”, “deus”, “trois”, but they did fine when I played the entire song one more time, this time with the ending.
Bee Bee Bumblebee	Review Chant, introduce dynamics
Just like If You’ve Got One, Bee Bee Bumblebee was far more successful with the second class than it was with the first, and I think it really had to do with the focus of the class. I had the same plan here - introduce forte and piano, and have the students chant away at different volumes. These students also had the inclination to emphasize “out!” at the end of the chant even when they were supposed to be chanting in piano, but fewer kids were unnecessarily loud, and it seemed easier to keep the students’ attention even after the loud “out!”. I had them practice changing volumes on a whim while chanting, and that was a lot of fun for the kids.
I Am A Pizza	Review Song, teach next stanza, get students to echo each other
I broke out into I Am A Pizza to get things going, and the students followed me in echo. I then spent a little time reminding the students that the last line in each stanza was meant to be sung together, not in echo, and that took a little bit of practice. However, the next thing I did with them was a lot of fun - I had the students split in two (the carpet color pattern makes this very easy), andI had the students sing the song while echoing each other. It helped to have another parent helper in the room to lead the other set, as otherwise I would have found myself bouncing back and forth to lead both groups of students. I started with one side, and then I started with the other side, and the kids seemed to really enjoy this. During each iteration, I would motion a circle with my hands to remind the students to sing that last line together. After the echoing, I had the students echo me as I sang the second stanza. But, a weird thing happened - after the 4th line, I blanked out, and realizing that the other parent (nor the kids) knew the next line, I switched over to the third stanza, and we finished the song. Kids at that age probably realized that I forgot something, but it didn’t stick with them, and they still enjoyed the rest of the song. The end of the song is a little different from the main parts of the song, so we had to spend a little extra time going over those lines.
Deep and Wide	Review, remove words
I started motioning the “deep” and “wide” signs for the students, and a few students remembered the song! With some already singing, we sang together once through, and then one more time to get everyone on board. I then asked the students if they remembered what the class did in the past with the song, and I received a few fumbling answers that were more or less correct - that we had skipped singing certain words. I then instructed the students to eliminate “wide” - and we started the song off. It actually started pretty well with a few students leaking singing into “wide”, but it also started to generate more and more laughter such that by the time we ended up at the end of the song, those saying “wide” were getting louder. I didn’t want this to turn into a lost song, so I quickly switched gears to something out of my back pocket.
Victor Vito	Review, also add echoing
With the last few minutes, I started singing Victor Vito, and the kids quickly sang along with me (although a few noted that they knew the song, independently of the fact that we sang it before). We went through one stanza and one chorus, and then I immediately stopped the class, and asked the chorus to be echoed, one side at a time, similar to what was done with I Am A Pizza. I ended up singing the first stanza again to let one side start the echo, and then I used the second stanza to have the other side start. The chorus ends in unison, so I had to remind the students to sing together at the end, which was also similar to the Pizza song. At this point, I could tell that the teacher was ready to get started with classwork, so we ended there. Always leave the students wanting more, right? There were actually some students stunned that we didn’t sing about going slow or fast, which would have been during the 2nd half of the song that we didn’t cover. I suppose I didn’t really need to cover Victor Vito in the second class; there was little time left, and the teacher could have easily restarted class a few minutes earlier.

So, clearly the day didn’t end up as I planned. The second class showed great progress, while the first class was a bit exasperating - more so than in past years and classes. At this point, the first class is also far behind so much that I could probably simply take the previous week’s second class plan and use it for the first class the next time I teach. I don’t really want to get into the habit of preparing two separate lesson plans, but perhaps I may need to.