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.