Teaching Notes, 20150429

Three more weeks before the show, and that means more review! I did want to try keeping things fresh, and I definitely wanted to retry the rainbow song, since I didn't feel like the students really had the song well understood at this point.

Teaching Peace	Warmup
Teaching Peace is well known to the entire school since just about every student sings it during weekly assemblies. With a ukulele in hand, I figured this was an easy way to get the students singing quickly. We went through the chorus, a stanza, and a chorus, and that was it; the students all sang through pretty well. I did have the students end with a "hey!" shout, which amused them and added just a little color to the song.
Sing A Rainbow	Review signs, sing, and reteach 2nd half
I followed the same process that I used for This Land for the previous week - first the students were asked to mirror me in silence, and I did a few random signs, eventually converging on signs relevant to the song. Students naturally started to sing that first part, which they knew pretty well, and I let them go ahead and sing along. But then, I had them become silent mirror again, and I had the students mirror the signs for the 2nd half of the song. Most did not remember these, and so I treated this as if I were teaching the students for the first time. I had the students echo me as I sang and signed the 2nd half; afterwards, I asked them what certain signs were. We then echoed the 2nd half again, and I had the students sing the 1st half with me only signing for them. I definitely will want to revisit this next week to reinforce the 2nd half of the song.
Razzama Tazzama	Immerse
Razzama Tazzama is always a fan favorite with the kindergarteners, and with only a few more classes left, I wanted to find a time to let the students enjoy this activity. It started a bit slowly - I usually just start clapping and then singing along - but as each stanza went on, the students got more and more into the activity. It ends with the kids laughing through the last stanza, and I could tell they had a great time with this.
Cookie Jar (spontaneous)	Well, I didn't really plan this
Now with the act of clapping steadily, some of the students started to chant the cookie jar chant, and who am I to stop that kind of momentum? And so, for the first class, I let them take a detour from the scheduled activities and do the cookie jar chant. We managed to involve one of the teacher aides into the activity, which the students loved. There was a very small amount of coaching needed to get the students to respond quickly at each stage, but the kids after only two iterations seemed to know what to do. I didn't want to spend a lot of time with this, and so we were able to cover about 6 students' worth with this activity.
Tritsch Tratsch Polka	Move to the music
I know that I don't have the students listen to clips of music as much as other teachers do, and so this was a bit of a treat for the students. I started playing the music, and then moving around (including stepping, tiptoeing, clapping, etc.) to the music. I tried my best to imitate the style of the music being played (e.g. tiptoeing when it was soft, pretending to march when the music sounded grand, etc.). After the song was over, I asked what the song sounded like when we did specific movements (e.g. marching, rolling arms, clapping quickly).
Jenny Jenkins	Review
This was basically a review of the song, with an emphasis on the tongue twister as well as the rhymes to color. I did ask the students to provide the color ideas, and the 2nd class took this even farther - they asked about colors like "turquoise" and "silver". I promised the students that I'd come up with appropriate lines for those colors.

I did manage to change the starting pitches a few times for Teaching Peace and Jenny Jenkins, as I had a side goal of getting the students used to changing a song to fit their own voices. Next week I do plan on reviewing again for the show, and I'm really hoping to get through the Rainbow Song all the way through one more time.