Teaching Notes, K, 20140917

It’s week 3, and unfortunately, my bad back is still limiting me somewhat in terms of what I can do motion-wise. However, I was determined to try to get the students to do some sort of basic dance, and so I planned something for the kids. I’m still working on a mixture of day 1s for both curriculums, with a sprinkling of day 2 material.

I Like You	Kick off class w/ song, teach more variations
The students started seated on the carpet, and I simply started singing. A few of the students joined in quickly, but not everyone. I sang it one time through while using the ASL sign for “friend” at the end of the song; next, I taught the children how to sign “friend” in ASL, and I encouraged them to try to do the sign when “friends” was sung. We sang it one more time. Knowing that I wanted to do a dance that had the children tap their heel or toe on the ground, I then had the students practice that (e.g. “we will heel…”). It sounds funny, but to the kindergarteners, it made total sense. We then covered a few other motions before moving on.
Criss Cross Applesauce	Teach motions, chant, and variations
I initially started moving my hands in the air for the criss-cross, and then when it came to tapping for “pepperoni pizza”, I tapped on the ground for the first class. This turned out to be very difficult on the back, and so for the second class I modified this by standing up (while the children were sitting), and tapping on my knees. But through all this, I wasn’t saying anything yet. The pepperoni pizza pattern is something that the kinders didn’t pick up well initially (as opposed to copying my criss-crosses with my hands), and so I had them practice the pattern a few times. With the students sufficiently following the motion patterns, I then did the motions while chanting. A good chunk of the students knew the chant, and so they were able to follow very easily now that they had something familiar to follow with the motions. Next, I had the students recite the applesauce portion as if they were mice, which meant chanting in a really high-pitched voice. But, before they could go into the pizza part, I asked them what the opposite of “high” was, and to chant the pizza portion as if it were a humongous pizza. We did the same with soft and loud, and finally when I had the students chant the applesauce part slowly, I simply asked them what they wanted to do with the pizza, and they knew to chant that quickly. This is one activity that probably works better by teaching the regular version one day and then extending it with variations the 2nd day, but this is something that was found on day 1 of both curricula, and so I wanted to cover this completely.
Five Fat Sausages	Teach chant
With the students still seated, I first asked the students what season it was, and what the sounds of the season were. We talked about the wind, falling leaves, and other sounds. I then talked about frying sausages (yes, a weird segue, but the kids didn’t seem to notice). I had the students shake their whole bodies to replicate a sizzle, and with the chant covering “pop” and “bam”, I had them make a quiet-ish pop with their mouths, followed by a much louder clap and “bam”. Starting with 5 sausages, I had the students echo me for three of them, and then we finished the chant with the other two. Next, I asked the students to point out differences between “pop” and “bam”, and eventually I asked them how short “bam” was. I convinced the students that it was supposed to be very short and loud, and so we restarted the chant with two sausages.
Come And Follow Me	Get students to follow, then reset them into a circle
I wanted to get the students to form a circle, and so I used this activity to get them into first a line. The students were scattered all around the carpet, but the carpet does have columns of colors, so I had the students arrange themselves clearly in a color. Next, I had students of one particular carpet color follow me, and then I simply had the students try to mimic and follow the student in front of them. We then proceeded to walk all the way to the back of the room, and I kept changing the “motions”, although oftentimes they were simply different things to do with the arms. I did try to get the students to walk backwards, and that was probably the least successful of the motions that I had them do. Anyhow, I was able to lead the students back into something that sort of approximated a circle around the carpet. The students do sort of follow each other, but they will gravitate ever so slightly towards me, and so I ended up with a bit of a shortcutted blob instead of a nice circle.
Simi Yadech (Shenanigans)	Teach dance
I actually wasn’t using the dance recommended by the Shenanigans, but instead I was going to something simple - a dance where I would do a heel-toe-heel-toe, followed by 4 small steps towards the middle of the circle, followed by another heel-toe-heel-toe, and 4 steps back to the outside. For the first class, however, the students became very chaotic, and I struggled to try to get the students to follow directions, particularly when going into the circle. With time running out, I simply punted and moved on. However, the second class featured just enough less chaos such that I was able to get the students to try to at least scramble back to the outside. I convinced the students that it was a game to try to end up in the same spot outside the circle after walking back out. This song follows an A-B form, where B goes slightly faster. However, I didn’t plan on giving the students anything during the B form during this time, since I figured (correctly) that they would have to take the time to reset their position. However, partway through the song, I started having the students follow a simple pattern for the last bar of the B form - knee tap, clap, shoulder tap, hands in the air. As the students became more proficient with the pattern, I simply doubled it in the same time - two knee taps, two claps, etc. By that point the students were paying attention very well and focusing quite well on the pattern and getting back to their original positions in time for the pattern. As for the first class, I’ll definitely try it again, since I mentioned to them that in order for the dance to work, people have to follow closely.
Make New Friends	Teach via echo
With the kids seated again, this was a simple echo exercise. This isn’t the easiest song to learn, and so when it was time to put it together, I had the kids sign again “friends”, and a few other rudimentary (non-ASL) signs for “one” and “circle”.

For both classes, I did have to use Show Me, but I used it twice only for the first class. I also introduced the “Class?” call-and-answer to the first class, which didn’t seem to go as well as it did for the second class. When I tried “Class?” for the second class, a few students remembered, and I made it clear how happy I was that they remembered.

As I noted earlier, I’ll re-use the dance for the upcoming week. I might have to start staggering material a bit between the two classes in the event the second class starts to pull ahead of their first class compatriots.

Teaching Notes, K, 20140910

One of many great things about Music for Minors is that as a volunteer, you’re armed with plenty of songs and suggested lesson plans. With the MfM kickoff having taken place during the weekend, I discovered that the kinder lesson plans were once more revised. As a result, I now have two sets of lesson plans. Why is this good? I can now interleave the two plans together, eliminate duplicate material, and now I have lots and lots of ideas for the whole year. Yay!

And so, similar to last week, I wanted to cover many different songs and activities without focusing too much on one thing. After all, they are kindergarteners. However, I did want to try to review at least Oats Peas Beans. Here’s what happened.

Fine Friends Are Here	Immerse, then add kodaly signs
Before singing, I instead asked the students to mirror what I was doing with my hands - I raised them up, moved them in different random ways, and threw in some Kodaly signs. Most followed just fine, and even more importantly, the class was pretty silent. I then started to sing the song, doing the Kodaly signs when “Fine Friends are Here” was sung. The first time through, I didn’t really stop to let the students know to follow me, but before the second time, I did tell them to try mirroring my hands during just those words. I did this one more time (three times in all), and during the third time, I probably got half of the students to follow. I definitely had to slow down the song during those hand motions, which helped a bit. Finally, I then asked the students to sing with me while doing the signs if they felt comfortable, and during that iteration, probably a quarter of the students did it. This is something I’m going to use over and over again so I wasn’t aiming for perfection during this first time.
Marching, Marching	Get students moving
We’re going to be marching a lot during the school year, and I wanted to instill a sense of marching or at least moving together in sync. The students were still at this point sitting scattered on the carpet, which was perfect - I had them stand up, and practice taking steps in place, following my steps. I had to remind them to try to stay in place, so we also spent a little time examining where our feet were - that was our “home base”. And so, we started taking steps together, and it probably took about 8-10 steps before a majority of the kids were following me. With the kids now in rhythm, I sang the song. Marching, Marching allows for a lot of substitution of motion, and so I asked the students if they remembered what other things we did when marching in a circle. Some remembered that we jumped, and so I tried to get the kids to jump in sync before singing the corresponding song. Jumping is a lot harder to keep the kids together, and I didn’t try fighting the urge to jump continuously as some kids wanted to do. Next was tiptoeing, which was much easier. Last was sliding, and this also took some effort. We practiced sliding together in one direction four times, and then back to our original home base four times, allowing me to ask the students if they were close to their home base. (Most were not.) We then of course slid together to the song, going first in one direction (towards the front of the room) and then back.
Bee Bee Bumble Bee	Teach chant
I had the students all sit down again, and I started doing more hand motions just to get the students to follow me. Eventually I had them clapping with me, then tapping a knee, then tapping their nose, and then holding their hands out towards me. We repeated this, next with eight repetitions per movement, and then with four repetitions per motion. I then inserted the slow chant while continuing the pattern. After completing the chant, I asked the students to “follow me”, although I didn’t describe exactly what to follow; when I did the chant again, some followed my hand motions, some tried to say the chant, but just about everyone was trying to mimic something from me. I’ll revisit this again in a later class.
Oats Peas Beans	Review chant, teach song and in-place movements
I quickly transitioned to discussing gardens from the previous week. We talked about the things found in our gardens, and then I asked the students if they remembered what was in their garden. Eventually, the different kinds of produce were all mentioned, and I had the students chant out first just the items (“Oats, peas, beans, barley”), followed by the full chanted “poem”, which they did last week. However, I kept them echoing me, and for the second iteration of the chant echo, I sang the song. The students seemed to follow along pretty well; they already knew the words, and they were simply attaching a tune to the same words. We repeated the song-echo. Next, I then asked the students “If you were a farmer, how would you grow these oats, peas, beans, and barley?” I did get a few different answers, but most of them revolved around planting seeds, watering, and then eventually waiting. Yay! I then had them basically practice the 2nd verse of the song without talking about the 2nd verse; I had them pretend to plant seeds, then take a step back with arms folded, then stamp and clap (as an example of waiting), and then turning around looking afar. With the students now armed with basically an acted-out story, I then had them echo-sing the next verse. It worked quite well - we did it one more time before finally ending with another rendition of the chorus. However, this time, I had the students sing the chorus together. I realize that the chorus has no significant motions - I might have to add in some regular beat-keeping movements just so that the students aren’t suddenly still when singing the chorus.
Blow the Balloon (Ella Jenkins)	Teach students the story
I’ve used Ella Jenkins’ story about Padma from India and the Balloon song a couple of times now, and since there was a balloon-oriented activity I was going to do, I figured that this was as good as a time to use this story. The kids definitely seemed to catch on, even though the story is very short. But it provides a great segue to…
Bubble Time	Have kids explore spaces and being in a bubble
I had the students stand up, and pretend that they were indeed bubbles. We talked a bit about what happens when bubbles get too close to each other - they either bounce (more like a balloon) or they pop. I had them “add a little bit of air”, and I had the students pretend they were little bubbles. Adding more air meant that the kids had to find more space, and so I encouraged them to use most of the classroom. I did tell the students that I didn’t want them to pop, because then they’d have to sit down, but that didn’t stop some from gleefully crashing. :/ This particular exercise typically is done with a hand drum, but I didn’t have one; instead I had a small gong. I would tap, and then ask the students how, as bubbles, they would move around. Eventually I tried different rhythms, volumes, and speeds, and while I’m not convinced that the students really changed the way they moved around, they certainly had fun, perhaps too much fun. When we were done, I had them reseat themselves back in their original spots.
Slippery Fish	Sing with motions
With the kids seated again, I started moving my hands around, making a fish motion, and in the first class - some students automatically started singing the song! I did have to stop that, but knowing that there would be plenty of students who knew the song (and some who didn’t), I asked the students to first follow my motions, and sing along if they could. This was a pretty easy way to end the day.

I did introduce “Show Me” to the first class, although they really didn’t need it much again. I used it in the second class, as well as the “Class?” call-and-answer that I learned from the music instructors’ workshop that I attended during the previous weekend - that worked like a charm.

I had hoped to get the students doing another circle march/dance, but for time considerations, I ended up bailing on it; it’ll show up next week. I also did end the day with “Goodbye My Friends”, which most of the students remembered. I do plan on continuing to use a mixture of old and new lesson plans, and although I’m scheduled to teach 36 sessions, I feel that I’m going to have plenty of good material.

Teaching Notes, 20140903

After a bit of a delay, I’m teaching again! For the first time ever, I get to teach the same grade I taught last year - Kindergarten. This time, I have two classes every week. Due to an injury to my back, I had to push the start date a little later, but I’ll have plenty of opportunities to make up time with the kids.

Last year, I tried to stay in line with the standard curriculum for the first few weeks, and I’m hoping to do that more consistently this time around.

Hello My Friends	Sing while signing ASL
This year, I sang to the students while signing “Hello” and “Friends”. I was hoping that the students would follow the signs, but I only got a few giggles. I then had the students learn the song by rote, one piece at a time, and that worked just fine. We’ll start many future classes with this song, so I wasn’t planning on have the class perfect this quite yet. After I was done with the song, I asked the class in sol-la-mi to sing back “Hello Mr. Chen” as a way to get them to learn my name. Unlike in previous years, I had forgotten to print out name tags in advance.
Johnny Johnny Up	Get students to explore vocal range
In all my years, I actually hadn’t used this until now, and it turned out to be a lot of fun for the kids. They liked speaking really high and really low, and they enjoyed in general being very loud. While usually this is sung with an octave range, I kept it within a fifth (C-E-F-G/G-F-E-C), since I was teaching kinders. Adding to the fun, I had the students move up and down whenever saying “up” and “down.” I then also asked a student to come up, lend us his or her name, which we then used to substitute for “Johnny”. The kids *loved* this, and I did it one more time with another student.
I Like You	Get students to walk in a circle, follow instructions
I Like You is a pretty easy song to learn, and so to me it’s really a way to assess what the students know in terms of walking in a circle and listening to instructions. The students originally were sitting on a 5-colored carpet, and so I had students, color by color, to move over to one side of the carpet, forming a circle (well, a rectangle). Next, I wanted the students to start marching to the right, so I asked the students to raise their right hand. At this age, you pretty much get a slightly better than 50-50 split on right-left knowledge, and so I went around the room to make sure that everyone had that right hand up. I then had the students stretch out that hand to the side, and then point in that direction - also not an easy thing to do. With all of the students pointed in one direction, I had them practice taking small steps, which seemed ok until some students started bumping into each other. I had to make sure that they understood that if there wasn’t much room, they were ok taking the smallest step ever. When the students were proceeding at a slow but regular pace, I then started singing the song. I didn’t ask the students to sing along at first, but eventually as the song progressed the students started singing along. I substituted “I like you” with several different replacements and corresponding motions - jump, tiptoe, slide - while showing the students how to do each one (e.g. not too huge, etc.). Amusingly, in one class, when doing the slide, everyone slid in the same direction, making the rectangle move over a bit. We’ll definitely have more opportunities to walk in a circle, and we’ll continue to walk to the right.
I Can Sing Up High	Teach students the song and motions
I asked the students if they brought their instruments, and while most said “no”, and a few offered that they brought imaginary instruments. Eventually some students said that they could use their voice, and that is exactly what I had them explore more, even though we sort of did that already with “Johnny Johnny Up”. I then had them do the movements, followed by the song. I of course got to ask them what was in between high and low, and many students said “middle” to my delight. I didn’t do too many iterations of this, since we’ll definitely practice this again.
Show Me	Teach students the response
I was saving this for only when I really needed it, and it turned out that I needed to use this only once in the 2nd of the two classes. The second class followed this quite well, including the echo.
Oats Peas Beans	Teach chant only with clapping
I started with asking the students if they had a garden, and what they had in it. I’m pretty sure I got a mixture of real items in gardens and some from imaginary gardens as well. Each time we got an item, I had the students to echo in sol-mi “I like ____”. We went through tomatoes, strawberries, even legos (lego garden?) Eventually, I steered the items found in a garden to peas, beans, and then oatmeal - I asked if anyone could grow oatmeal in a garden. I next introduced the students to “barley”, which none of the students knew. Finally, I had the students say the four words, “oats”, “peas”, “beans” and “barley” while clapping to each syllable, pointing out that barley required two claps. After some syllable clapping, I then had the students practice the Oats song in a slow steady chant. The students seemed to follow well, even if they really didn’t know how barley grew. I’ll be sure to have the students try singing the song at a later date.
Itsy Bitsy Spider	Talk about sounds, sing song in various ways
I asked the students if they recalled sounds from the morning, and that was surprisingly difficult to get answers from them. However, eventually I was able to squeeze out of the students a bird and a truck or train. We talked about big booming sounds coming from large things, and tiny, tweety sounds coming from small things, and with that, I started singing this song - something that most of the students already knew. I asked the students to try to sing the song again, first as a teeny tiny spider, and then as a huge hulking spider. We ended with pretending that the spider was quiet - we whispered the song together.
Goodbye My Friends Goodbye	Immerse students into the song
I ended the day with this song, which was easy for the students to learn as the melody was exactly like the opener.

Because I’m following the standard lesson plans closely as well as last year’s kinder lessons, I’m probably going to be a little less descriptive with my findings, unless it was different from last year’s experience. From a behavior standpoint, the students did very well. This year is a little different in that I have two different teachers’ classes in two different classrooms, and the dimensions of the carpeted area are definitely different (it is larger in the second classroom). However, both seem to be very eager classes, and I’m looking forward to the year and teaching every week.