| 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. | |
| 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. | |
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