Teaching Notes, 20141112

With Halloween now past, and a few weeks before Thanksgiving arrives, I could finally rely mainly on the suggested curricula from MfM. This day, I was going to bring the rhythm sticks back, while reviewing a few things from the past. I also wanted to introduce rhythm,.

Leaves Are Red And Yellow	Review song and add a third stanza
The students were already familiar with this song, and with a change in the weather coming very soon, I wanted to introduce the line where the air was “crisp and colder”. This was turned out to be a pretty easy exercise, now that this was the third time the students had sung this song. I started the first class with “red and yellow” before following up with “crisp and colder”, and it allowed me to talk with the class about how it was getting colder. I had the students wave their hands and make swishing sounds to represent the wind when they sang the new lines. Incidentally, for the second class, I inadvertently started by singing the new line, which meant that I was singing alone for that entire first time, but then I quickly switched to “red and yellow”.
I’m In the Mood for Singing	Start singing and teach by echo
I sang the whole song through once, and then had the students answer (e.g. “hey, how about you?”) each of the odd-numbered lines. I think this took a little getting used to, so I was deliberate about taking this slowly the first time through. I did have the students emphasize the very last word of the last response (“that!”), which added a little bit of excitement to the song. I tried this one more time through, although this time I quickly whispered their response; the last two responses are similar enough that they definitely still needed some help. Originally I was going to try to substitute another thing for “singing”, but I decided to move onto the next item.
Little Bird	Teach song and lead activity
We spent a little bit of time talking about birds that they saw or heard recently, and I certainly got a variety of them, some real, and some imaginary. I had the students mimic the sounds coming from the birds, such as blue jays, crows, and tweety birds. I then told them that I heard chickens, turkeys, and then even a hummingbird (which you can’t really hear). I then proceeded to tell them about a time when a bird flew into the room when I was teaching. This story is of course manufactured; it’s part of the suggested curriculum, but it does give a nice backstory to the song. I sang the first half of the song, then I had the students echo the song in parts to me. It then told the second half of the story, sang the second half of the song, and then had the students echo it back to me. After I mentioned that the bird actually flew out the window, I then had the students stand up and raise their arms as if they were the window shades; when they sang “and buy molasses candy”, I had them lower their arms and squat down as if the shades were closing. The game for this song is pretty simple; one student is the “bird”, and while the song is sung, the bird can fly in and out of the circle of student windows. When the window shades go down, we can see whether or not the bird escaped. The students of course loved this game. The challenge here, however, is that only one or two birds can really be flying in the circle at any time. I first had one student (twice), then I tried having two before moving onto the next activity.
Rhythm on Rhythm sticks	Review ways to play on the sticks, find rhythms
While humming “I’m in the Mood for Singing”, I stared passing out the rhythm sticks, but first with the smooth sticks only. After passing those out, I had the students put their stick on the ground, and when most did that, I started passing out the rippled sticks. I realized later on that I probably should have just passed out the rippled sticks to those who had put their stick on the ground first. I meant to have the students sing to “I’m in the mood for tapping”, but I simply forgot to do this. We spent a little bit of time reviewing ways to play the sticks - tapping, zipping them, clicking them.
Bongo Joe	Stick to song
I got the students quickly to form a continuous beat, and then I started to sing Bongo Joe to the song. Next, I had the students stick to just the last three beats of each phrase - that sort of worked ok, although it was a little difficult to have the whole class stick to just those three beats. Finally, I was hoping to have the students stick the rhythm of the song, but a combination of the fact that the students didn’t really remember the song very well from past weeks, and the fact that, well, they had sticks, made it difficult for them to really stick together (no pun intended - hah!). As such, I then went ahead and collected the sticks while having the students echo “Hello World”.
Name That Tune	Have students guess rhythms
This was a pretty straightforward activity, where I would click a rhythm, and they would guess. However, it wasn’t very effective initially. I tried Bee Bee Bumblebee, Oats Peas Beans, I’m in the Mood, and Old MacDonald, and the only song that the students were able to identify without a melody hint was Bee Bee Bumblebee. They still seemed intent on guessing and were paying attention well, but it’s going to take a bit more work to get the students familiar with the songs before they can pick them out just by a rhythm. We ended with Goodbye My Friends Goodbye, as I have been doing pretty much all year.

I did manage to get the sticks out, but in retrospect, the students didn’t have the sticks for very long. One thing that was notable - I had a substitute for the second class, and those students probably did the best out of any K class I’ve taught ever with a substitute. (Props go out to the sub, too!) For the first time, I didn’t use “show me” or “class” to recapture the focus of the class; instead, I simply did a few arm waves with the first class, and with the second class, I didn’t have to do anything! It was pretty refreshing!