Teaching Notes, 20150916

Today I wanted to introduce rhythm sticks for the first time, and although they tend to introduce a great deal of chaos, I planned on trying a few different things to keep their focus.  I still wanted to keep changing topics, and so here's what happened.

1. Introduction: Fine Friends Are Here.  I had the students hum the first response (sol-mi-re) a few times, seeing if they could match my pitch.  (They mostly did.)  And then I added the words to the response.  Although I instructed the students to sing "Fine Friends Are Here" as a response to my line, the kids kept echoing me.  I then tried the same thing with the second response (mi-re-do), and that wasn't any more successful.  I wasn't too worried here - this was the first song where I wanted the students to respond rather than echo, and so I'll be sure to retry it tomorrow.
2. Five Fat Sausages.  I tapped a beat on my knees and started chanting.  No echoing this time - the students followed up and chanted with me.  It was a nice review!
3. Rhythm sticks.  With help with a parent, I passed out a smooth stick to each student, but I asked the student to keep their hands behind their backs.  That didn't last very long, and so there were many kids who were banging the sticks on the ground.  I did pass out the second stick to those who were quiet, which seemed to help convince more students to also be quiet.  I had the students then keep a beat with me on the sticks.  We also chanted through "Row Row Row" and "Oats Peas Beans" while keeping the beat with sticks.
   
   It's always a bit of a challenge to keep the students attention when they have sticks in hand, and so at times I had them mimic me putting the sticks in the air, on my head, or on my shoulders - those seem pretty effective.  Having the students put the sticks on the ground was definitely not effective.  I did have the students also explore making the scratching sound while rubbing the sticks together.
4. Quarters and Rests.  I wrote a vertical line that resembled a "stick", and I had the students play reasonably together one hit.  I then wrote a second line, and had the students play two "sticks".  I then wrote four more - followed by four more "sticks".  However, then, I erased the 3rd line and replaced it with a squiggle.  A few students knew what I was doing (which was a good measurement of who had some experience reading music), and then I asked the student to not hit their sticks on the squiggle, since it didn't look like a stick.  We tried a few times, and while I never achieved silence on beat three, I think most of the students had fun with this.
5. Raisins.  I have always liked using this song (from the Barenaked Ladies) to have the students follow me in various stick patterns.  I kept the movements pretty tame, and the students had a good time with it.
6. Hello World.  I had the students echo me while I cleaned up the sticks.  I was able to cover most of the class with one stanza, which was all I really wanted to cover.
7. Simi Yadech.  This was a repeat of the dance from a few weeks ago.  Not a lot of students really remembered, which was great for me!  I tried to emphasize small steps and finding your home space; in fact, I preceded this activity with "Show Me" that ended with "Show me your space".
8. Slippery Fish.  This was the standard song from Charlotte Diamond, and I tried to use ASL signs whenever possible for the creatures.  Good fun.
9. Closing: Goodbye My Friends.  This time, to make this different, we sang this first in English, and then in Mandarin!

In retrospect, 9 different activities is a pretty good amount of variation, even if some of the activities involved sticks.