Teaching Notes, 20160420

Today was a beautiful day - blue skies, perhaps a little on the warm side - perfect for going outside and doing a dance.  I also wanted to cover at least one old favorite with the kids as well as review at least one of the songs for the Spring Sing.

1. Intro: Teaching Peace.  I started singing this song with my ukulele, expecting the kids to follow along.  However, few did, and I was told by the teacher that this song was no longer featured as a Wednesday assembly song.  And so, I then had the students echo the chorus with me, line by line.  They did that, but I didn't try to sing without echoing this time around.  This was meant to be an intro; I'll try to teach them formally later.
2. Bow Wow Wow: I first taught the kids what amounted to a chant with the kids inside, and unpaired.  We practiced this a few times, and with that, I decided to take the kids outside while singing "My Bonnie".
3. Bow Wow Wow (outside): With the students in a large circle, I had them practice once, and then I demonstrated with one student what the dance/chant looked like with a partner.  I quickly then paired up the students, and then had them try it out.  Arguably, I didn't spend a lot of time, and I realized that with the children spaced out widely, explanations would have been more challenging than I had liked.  Instead, I wanted the students to try it, and they did the first time, with mixed results.  I quickly re-paired the students, tried it again, and it was a lot more effective, with most of the students understanding - and more importantly, the students were helping each other with the dance.  We then did the activity three more times until I asked them if they remembered where in the circle they started.
4. Seven Jumps.  I had the students, already in a circle, point to the right, and we decided to step to the right for 8 steps (with counting).  We also practiced the three claps and turnaround (twice).  I then turned on the music, and we were off.  The students remembered this dance from several weeks ago, and they loved it just the same.  I thought that being outside was going to be problematic when they kneeled on the floor, but the students were fine.
5. The Longer The Faster.  I had been playing the music through a bluetooth speaker connected wirelessly to my iPod, and with the iPod in hand, I decided to do The Longer The Faster on the fly.  I discovered that with the circle so large, it was actually very challenging for the students to make it to the other side of the circle in 8 counts, especially during the latter stages of the song.  Many students near the end had to take 16 counts in order to find someone on the circle. When we were done, we went back into the classroom to "It's a Very Good Day"
6. Tony Chestnut.  This was review, but I did the middle of the song twice since that was the least familiar part of the song.  The students are slowly getting it, but they still need more repetitions.
7. Jenny Jenkins.  This was one of the songs from last year's Spring Sing, and it's always a fun one to sing.  I used my same story of a kid who didn't know what to wear, and I easily introduced the song to them.  I used two colors (white and blue, which happens to be the school uniform) as examples, and then I had the students pretend they were the kid - I had the students respond with "no I won't wear..."  I then picked out two colors - red, green, and two students who happened to have a little bit of those colors in their clothing.  We then sang as if they were the kids, using their names, which they seemed to enjoy.
8. Exit: Goodbye My Friends.  The students returned to their seats.

I didn't practice The Milky Way this time, and so I'll want to do that for the next class.  It has also been a while since I had instruments in the class, so I'll have to reintroduce them.