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.