Teaching Notes, 20150318

Today, I wanted to bring back and old favorite - Who Stole The Cookie - which I had been hanging onto for many weeks, waiting for the right time to introduce it. Today, I thought, was going to be the day. Here's what happened.

Somebody's Knocking	Immerse-review, add stomping
I didn't really originally have a good opener for this day, so I decided to use a past successful activity in Somebody's Knocking to get the class started. The kids followed easily, and after the first round, I then changed the song to "somebody's stomping on the floor". That was pretty easy for the kids to follow, and I switched back to the original line. This activity also automatically got the kids standing, which made the next activity interesting.
Who Stole The Cookie	Teach activity
I started this by simply having the students echo me chanting and clapping to the first line - one clap at the start of every measure. This led to four claps, and I asked the students in the first class which words were being spoken when a clap took place. This turned out to be a very difficult exercise for the kids, even after practicing several times, and so for the second class, instead I wrote out the four lines (with "jar" as the solitary word on the last line). This made it a lot easier for the kids to "see" the clapped words, and I rewrote those first words in a different color. We repeated the first line, and then I chose a student for the second line, making it clear that I was only guessing. That first student in each class took it well, being chosen without their permission, and I immediately followed up by asking the student if they really took the cookie. I then worked with the student, along with the rest of the class to finish the rest of the chant. We all said the first line once more, and then once I gave that student the chance to pick the next person, the entire class got pretty excited. It took about 4 iterations before the chosen student didn't need to be prompted, but since the students were standing, I noticed that the class would slowly migrate towards the chosen person, something I didn't anticipate. In the second class, the chosen student ran to the other side of the class, with other kids in pursuit, which pretty much ended the activity.
Animal Rhythms	Explore various rhythms of familiar songs
I asked the students if they remembered the animals that we had worked with from the previous week, and when they acknowledged that they did, I asked them what animals were featured in that first line of Who Stole The Cookie. Doing this works better with the words already on the board, and we were able to recite that first line in animal. I then asked them how they would represent the animal rhythms in Oats Peas Beans (with an obligatory singing of the first phrase). Then, I asked them about the first two lines of Sing A Rainbow. Of course, that was deliberate...
Sing A Rainbow	Review, add 2nd stanza
I wanted to introduce the second stanza, and so after doing a quick review of the signs and the first stanza, I then tried to teach them new signs, such as "sing" and "listen". However, when I sang "listen to your eyes", I quickly lost the class; they were confused and wondering how one could listen with their eyes and not their ears. For the first class I was able to get through the second stanza, but that was it; I returned the students to the first stanza and moved on. For the second class, the class was pretty much paying attention to something other than myself that I also moved on without completing the second stanza.
The Longer The Faster (1st class)	Review and Dance
The last time I tried to do a dance with the 1st class, we didn't get very far, so this time I decided to try The Longer The Faster with the first class. I made sure I had enough time to explain how the dance worked, and I deliberately had the class practice both counting to 8 and tapping the next student at the 8th count. There isn't a whole lot else one can do to prep the class for this song, and so we went off and tried it. Even though I've used this song countless times, I keep relearning tricks about this. First off, the original song, for kinders, definitely speeds up way too quickly near the end, and I really should be carrying a slower version. Plus, students have a habit of picking their friends, and so I continually had to remind students to pick someone who hadn't gone before; near the end of the song when havoc is high and the music is blaring, this is difficult to do. Anyhow, after the song was over, we got to talk about what worked and what didn't, as well as how the song was changing. It's always nice to have the time to have a little chat about what the students experienced.
Old King Glory (2nd class)	Teach, attempt dance
Just like I usually do with this song, I had the students echo the song with me, and then I arranged the children into a circle. While getting them to march, however, the students had a surprisingly difficult time trying to march evenly space-wise, and I realize that I didn't have my usual talk about taking tiny steps when there wasn't much space. Perhaps this was because I was trying to squeeze this in at the end of the day. We started and stopped the marching a few times, and unfortunately it didn't seem like the kids were going to be able to do this, and so we stopped. Even though the recess bell rang, I held onto the kids for a minute longer to talk about the crashing that was going on, and whether or not it was a good thing. Fortunately most admitted that they would rather not be bumping into each other, and so perhaps I'll try this again next time, with proper time and spacing.

I have one more class before break, and I think I'm going to wan to try the Rainbow song once more. I do want to get the kids to dance one more time, but I'm not sure if I'm really going to have the time to pull that off, considering that I'm still trying to cover all of the material for the upcoming sing. The next class will be the first class of Spring, and there is plenty of Spring material that is waiting to be covered, too.