Teaching Notes, 20150422

Now that spring break has passed, I only have 8 more classes left with the kindergarteners. Four of those classes, including today's, lead up to the spring sing, which is now part of the school's International Day celebration, and so I knew I had to cover material for the show. At the same time I wanted to keep the class moving, so my goal was to limit the number of repetitions we had on the songs.

This Land Is Your Land	Review motions
The classes were both pretty chatty when I arrived, and so I had the students simply mirror my movements until they were mostly following me. I then started doing motions related to the song, and eventually some students figured out what I was doing - they starting singing the song. And so, I then had the students turn on theif voices, and we sang (and moved) to the first stanza of the song. I didn't expect the students to remember the 2nd and 3rd stanzas very well. For the 2nd stanza, I simply had the students echo my voice and motions, and after we did it once through via echo, we sang the entire stanza with motions together. For the 3rd stanza, I had the students go back to mirror mode, where I had them copy all of my motions for that stanza. I then had the students turn their voices back on, and we echoed through that 3rd stanza, followed by singing through one time through. The echo on/off modes seem to be pretty effective at getting the kids to pay attention - it's a game to some, but when students see that they're simply trying to copy me, they really seem to enjoy it. I had the students end this exercise by having them reprise the first stanza, but when they started to sing it, I stopped singing myself (although I kept doing the motions), and the students kept going on. It was great to see them sing without needing my voice to guide them.
Mail Myself To You	More Review of song
I followed the same process that I used for This Land, starting in silence with movement, then adding volcals, followed by singing all the way through together. The reaction was also almost the same, although only about 3 students per class remembered the song enough to name it. We got through all 4 stanzas, and similar to This Land, I had the students sing in unison the first stanza one last time, with me being mostly silent.
Come And Follow Me	Review, form circle
Both classes, particularly the second class, have been notorious for being less successful forming a circle, and so I had the students follow me around the room. However, I had the students focus on the color of carpet they were standing over, and I called groups of students by carpet color to come and join me. Students found this to be again a fun challenge - to be the best imitator of me - and we worked all around the room, weaving around desks. I kept reminding the students to try to follow my path, and they did a pretty good job, particularly when we returned back to the carpet.
Jenny Jenkins	Review and examine rhymes
I picked up my ukulele and started to sing this song, only to find that a lot of students had forgotten the lyrics. (They remembered the melody.) And so, I ended up re-teaching the song and words, including recapping the story about Jenny Jenkins and how she couldn't decide what color to wear. We started working through the colors, and for each color, I wrote both the color and the rhyming word or phrase next to it. By the time we had 4 or 5 colors on the board, I had the students recite the color along with the complementary words, and I asked the students if they noticed any pattern. After acknowledging that the words rhymed, I then asked the students about orange. For the first class, we had enough time to sing that "nothing rhymes with orange", but for the second class, I asked them to try to think of something that rhymes with orange for next week.

So, that was the class - only 5 items, but even without repeating it was a full class, and I thought the students did a good job staying focused. I'm going to have to keep reviewing show material for the next few weeks, but I'll try to keep adding new items to keep the students' experiences fresh.

Teaching Notes, 20150325

One of the dangers of going on break is that sometimes I slack off and forget to blog about the previous class. I did exactly that; we had a class on March 25th, and I don't have a lot of notes about it. I do recall that I was trying to review a lot of material for the upcoming show, but fortunately for the kids the better half of me convinced me that it was better to keep trying out new materials.

It's A Very Good Day	Warmup kids with the first stanza
This was pretty straightforward; get the kids singing the first stanza and move on. They sang without too much trouble, and indeed, I moved straight onto the next activity.
Plant A Little Seed	Teach song and movement
This was the first class in spring for the children, and I wanted to repeat some material that I had used in the previous year for spring. This was one of them, which is essentially a scale song for the spring. I talked about spring with the class, and I asked them about how one goes about growing something in the garden. This is an easy exercise in steering the conversation to fit the words of the song; with the steps covered, I had the kids recite them one more time, and then I had them echo me singing each line. The kids I think were able to pick up on the song pretty well, but this was a very time consuming activity, and by the end I could tell that the class was ready for another topic.
Tree Song	More teaching
I guess in retrospect I probably shouldn't have tried this (after all, there's more spring to be had later in the year), but I did anyway, since it's an easy segue after Plant A Little Seed. This was unexpectedly challenging however; the kids were starting to get restless. It probably didn't help that in the second class the regular teacher was mysteriously missing (leaving us with only one teacher's aide and no official substitute). We also spent a lot of time discussing the seasons. Anyhow, I think, knowing that I was running out of time, I rushed this a bit, and I don't think the kids learned the song as well as I had hoped. I'll be sure to re-use this later in the year.
Sing A Rainbow	Review, add 2nd stanza
I wanted to review this song since last week I wasn't able to get through the second stanza. However, with the class already in a bit of disarray, this was quite the challenge, especially in the second class. I reviewed the first stanza, and the students seemed to remember the song fine. I was able to add "can" to the signs, although I think only a few students retained that new word. The second stanza was basically passable for the first class; we covered it, added a few new signs (listen, eyes, everything, see, along), and while the students were able to cover the song, there wasn't a lot of energy. The second class however, had a difficult time trying to focus, and I found myself fighting a lot of side chatter. Usually when the regular teacher was there, this doesn't happen, but this time, again, there was no teacher.
This Land Is Your Land	Review
For the remaining time, I had the students since This Land, and we got through the first two stanzas before running out of time. This was fortuitous since I had forgotten the 3rd stanza.

Maybe it was fatigue, but I had hoped to have more effective classes. I think the students were still having fun, but I don't think they got the usual amount of educational value this time around. When we return after spring break (in three weeks), I'll have to a lot of review, and I'm hoping it doesn't become too tedious for them.