Teaching Notes, K, 20141126

Today was the day before Thanksgiving, which meant that it was time to pull out all of the turkey songs! Yipeee!!!!

Leaves Are Red and Yellow	Review song and add one more line
I started singing the song, and after singing the first stanza, I had the students stand up if they were wearing red or yellow when we sang “red” or “yellow”. Today turned out to be crazy hat/hair day, which also meant that students had a little more leeway in what they could wear. We then re-sang the song with the red and yellow movements (basically standing up followed by sitting down), which brought some amusement to the students. I did intend on adding another line to the song, but I felt that the red/yellow addition was enough for today. So, I moved on…
5 Fat Turkeys	Have students follow hand motions, teach song by echo
I didn’t really have to segue anything here - I simply instructed the students (silently) to follow my hands - first I did some simple motions until I had a quorum of students’ attentions, and then I started making the hand-turkey. With the hand-turkey assembled, I simply started singing the song. But, before I started formally teaching the song (which is very short), I stopped to talk about the upcoming holiday and what people liked to eat. Despite the song’s obvious subject, I received a variety of good answers comprised of foods other than turkey. Eventually we talked about the turkey, and I asked the students which was the animal that didn’t really like Thanksgiving as much as we did. I then had them re-form the hand-turkey, and we covered the song in echo + motions. The song gave me another chance to teach them another ASL sign - tree, which we used in the song.
John the Rabbit	Get students to respond to each lines of the song
We talked more about the other kinds of foods, and this time I had them echo me (like we did months ago) in sol-mi for each food that they liked. For instance, a student would say that they liked potatoes, so I would ask in sol-mi “who likes potatoes?” And then, the students would respond in sol-mi “I like potatoes”. I told the students about how my family growing up liked to make soup out of vegetables in the garden, but there was always a pesky rabbit that I named “John” who would sneak in and eat vegetables right out of the garden. I then told the students that my mother would sing the song and I would sing along. Of course this is another entirely contrived story, but it did solve the problem where the response that I wanted the students to mimic was “yes ma’am”. (I am not a ma’am.) I told the students that I, as a small boy, would sing “yes ma’am” when my mother would sing a line, and with ukulele in hand, I started to sing the song. When we got to the end of the song, I told them that the last line would start with “No”, and so when that happened, the answer was a long “nooooooooo, ma’am”. We sang through one time through, and I think the students got this. I definitely want to re-use this next time, so I moved on from there.
Bee Bee Bumblebee	Review, compare rhythm vs beat, and then play the game
I started the students in a steady clap, and then I had the students sing Bee Bee in sol-mi. I then asked the students if I were clapping steadily or if I were clapping to the words. I reviewed the “beat” with the students, and I added the tidbit where the beat can start before the song and keep going after the song was over. I had the students try to compare the beat by clapping to the words; then, I introduced formally (finally!) “rhythm” to the students. Before playing the game, I had them listen to me clap either a rhythm or beat (using old songs like Bongo Joe, Oats Peas Beans, and even Five Fat Sausages), and I had them identify which one I was clapping. I would have to remind them about the guidelines each time (e.g. was I clapping to words), but the students started to get it. We’ll definitely revisit this during the rest of the year. We then proceeded to play the game with the ball again a few times.
5 Fat Turkeys	Reprise!
After we were done, to recover the students’ attention, I had them follow my hands again, and this time, I had them do the 5 Fat Turkey song one more time, this time with a turkey pointing the other way. I didn’t have to re-announce the song; to them it was spontaneous fun.
The Turkey Ran Away	Teach by immersion, zipper in a few other foods
I had the students remind me who didn’t like Thankgiving so much, and so I started singing this song all the way through. I then asked the students what other foods (yep, pretty much the same thing as before), and then I asked them what they could make of those foods. Slowly, we made our way through apple (pie), pumpkin (pie), potato (mash). For the first one I sang the song with the substitution, but then I had the students simply sing along with the other foods. It seemed to work pretty well.

I was pretty much out of time here. For the first class (for which I could have gone overtime, I wanted to have the kids try Keep The Kettle Boiling, but they seemed to be at their attention limit, so I backed out of that. For the second class, I also encountered the same thing, except that I was able to get the students to chant “1,2,3” while clapping before the bell rang. Alas, I’ll use that in a future class.

I ended the say with Make New Friends.