Folk Dancing At Doxey Elementary

I had the pleasure of visiting Laurie Allen at Doxey Elementary last week and it was a dancing day!  Here's what you may not know about Laurie....


1)  She has taught at Doxey Elementary for 20 years! As a classified specialist!
2)  Laurie teaches music but touches on drama, story telling and dance.
3)  Laurie serves a very difficult community at a Title 1 school and she does her job traveling to and from classes on a cart.
4)  Laurie loves folk dancing!


That's why I was so lucky to be with her when she was teaching folk dance to her 5th graders. 


Laurie taught 3 different dances that day.  She started out with a very simple partner dance where the kids got to sashay down the middle and then do this cool move called DIP AND DIVE!  When the kids finally got it, it was like watching human weaving in action! 

Laurie also taught a circle dance which was a little more complicated.  It included partners again, some hand clapping and moving both directions.  The Laurie taught the Boot Scootin' Boggie!  Ahh!  Bringing me back to my country dancin' days. 


The kids really loved this one.  Here is my favorite picture of them...

The thing I enjoyed most about watching the kids dance was the look on their faces.  They truly enjoyed dancing with each other and smiled the whole time.


Laurie taught a lower grade class following the dancing and had a fun lesson that included the music Star Light Star Bright and glockenspiels or tone bells.  I loved the way she had the instruments set up for the kids.  They knew exactly what notes to play because she had removed some of the bars,  and what a great way to use a set or two of tone bells. 

The little kids had so much fun singing together that they began to hold on to each other and sway to the music.  They didn't know it, but they were practicing steady beat.  And...look at their faces!  Smiles all around!

Thanks, Laurie for sharing your classes with me.  I always love coming to see you and one day I AM going to catch you doing your amazing poetry!



Mizan

Have you ever met someone whose personality is larger than life? Someone who finds joy in everything he/she does? Someone who shares that joy and love of life with everyone around him/her?  I have.  Her name is Andi Hill aka Mizan. 


Mizan teaches at Parkside Elementary and she teaches both PE and Music.  Her PE classes are 2 days a week and her Music classes are 2 days a week.  I've never been to PE with her...but music is soooo much fun! 


Mizan begins every class with a listening activity to get the kids focused for the day.  The kids lie on the floor with the lights off while she plays some music for them and asks very intentional questions.  When they answer they are not allowed to only answer yes or no, they have to provide a reason behind their answer.  The day I visited Mizan was talking about how music makes you feel and asking if the titles of the music she played represented what the kids were feeling.  She used music from a Harry Potter sound track.  It was so interesting to hear the different responses from 1st graders and 6th graders.  The 1st graders gave answers like:  It makes me feel sad, mad, bad, tired, scared, etc., while the 6th graders gave answers like:  It makes me imagine that I'm at a funeral.  Both are appropriate responses but when you consistently use activities like this your kids start thinking deeper and relate music to their own experiences. 


Here is a picture of Andi walking around the kids asking those great questions.

Later in the day Mizan reviewed Rain, Rain Go Away with the kids.  She asked them about things they wanted to go away and had them replace Rain, Rain with the things they had suggested.  Some ideas they came up with were: homework, chores, bullies, annoying siblings (lol) and my favorite...CLOTHES!  What?  I'll keep mine thank you!


Then the kids sang another Rain Song and composed a storm for the interlude with body percussion and tennis balls.  They had so much fun!  Here is what sounded like:

Thanks for sharing your love of life and music with me, Mizan! 

Lakeside Lions

I absolutely LOVE going out to visit Kathi Garlick at Lakeside Elementary.  She is pure joy!  But my favorite part....is hearing all the funny things she says to her kids.  I can't stop myself from giggling and I'm probably a big distraction but I can't help it!  Here are a few gems from my most recent visit:


1.  Put your head back where it belongs.


2.  Student:  I had a waffle this morning.
      Kathi:    Why didn't you call me?  I thought we had a agreement about waffles!


3.  Student:   Look how loud I can clap!
     Kathi:      Wow!  That sounds like an explosion!


4.  What's in your mouth?  Lets not put that in your mouth.  Due to the fact that its hard to sing with a big thing in your mouth.


I'm sure there are many more, but it's hard to type them all up when you are crying because you are laughing so hard. 


Kathi has great classroom management and the kids just adore her.  They respond really well to everything she does.  When kids are a little out of control she uses an attention getter with all of her classes and it works like magic.  It goes like this...

T...Lakeside Lions,

S...Lakeside Rocks!

T...Now is the time,

S...When nobody talks!

And if there is a student who is a particular distraction...Kathi hands out stop signs.  I love it because it makes the kids take ownership in their misbehavior instead of the teacher having to constantly correct every little thing.

Kathi is a pro at a lot of things, but most especially at using the Silver Burdett Making Music Books.  You know a teacher has spent a lot of time developing lessons from those books when they look like this:

I really enjoy watching her use these lessons and see has she has tweeked them to fit her style of teaching.  The day I was visiting she was reviewing 16th notes with the upper grades and introducing combinations of 8th's and 16th's which can be pretty tricky.  First Kathi talked about what the different combinations looked like and then handed out some cards to the kids that had the rhythms and some corresponding words on them.  First they had to practice the correct rhythmic syllables and then they got to put the words to it.

Each card represented a total of 4 steady beats and at the end, after they had practice individually to a steady beat, they put it all together as a class.  Here's what they ended up with.

Kathi had another great activity with her 4th graders where they talked about different rhythm combination and then searched a familiar piece of music to find those same patterns within it.  Sorry, no pictures here...I was probably laughing again at her witty remarks. 

Way to go Kathi!







Old Man Winter notation

A while back I posted about Jeanette Egget teaching Old Man Winter. I didn't include notation in the post, but decided it might be helpful to have. Here's a link to the old post, and below is the music. Enjoy!

Uke can do this too!

Marci Low, at Endeavour Elementary, has started to teach Ukulele to her upper grade students for the first time.  Marci is a new music teacher this year at Endeavour and recently took an 8 week class through the community ed program to learn how to play the Ukulele for herself before she taught it.  Talk about a go getter!  That class has really paid off for Marci and I was so impressed when I visited her.

I loved the way Marci showed her kids how to finger a chord.  She used the Docu-cam!

What a great close up way for the kids to see where to put their fingers....and how.  

Marci sang some cute songs with the kids including Wheels on the Bus and Singing in the Rain which used only the F and C7 chord.  She talked to me a little bit about how the first week she taught she used the beginning chords she learned in her class and realized that when kids sang to those chords the songs were pitched way too low.  So she spent some time putting those songs in new keys and teaching new chords to her kids so they were pitched better.  These two chords put the songs in the perfect key for the kids and were easy to move back and forth from.  Here are some 4th graders with singing in the rain.

When Marci's younger grades came to class that day she was teaching about the notes in the scale and how the notes move up and down in steps, skips and jumps.  The kids practiced singing the scale in steps using this cute song about Hot Dogs...

Each phrase is sung on a different note of the scale until the end when it descends all the way down.

Marci had the classes do a shared writing activity on the board and create their own verse using the same form.  I thought it was funny that 2 separate 1st grade classes wrote about Star Wars...but maybe not too unexpected...

My favorite line is "A wookie rides a horse"!  Here they are singing it as a class...

Thanks for sharing your day with me, Marci!

6th grade boys!

I've posted about Angie Cammack at Clinton Elementary and her wonderful 6th grade boys who can sing before. But now I have the proof!

Here are some tips on how to get your boys (and girls) to sing for you.

1.   DO demonstrate they way you would like them to sing.  Elementary age children are very good at reproducing or copying a vocal sound.  If you naturally sing low, train yourself to sing a little higher for the sake of their young voices.  Sometimes a description like: 'light' or 'like a bird' is more appealling to boys than a word like high.

2.  DO use vocal play with them.  Practice vocal bowling or riding on the vocal roller coaster.  Good vocal play gets them in their head voice to stay.  

3.   DO use partner songs.  Girls and boys are natually competitive and will be very successful at partner songs.  

4.   Do encourage them to stand or sit up straight when they are singing.  Making sure the vocal mechanism is primed physically includes proper posture.  

5.  DO use songs they enjoy.  This does not mean every song has to be a pop song, but the more they enjoy the song, the more they will sing for you.

 5.  DO NOT push them to sound more mature than they are.  5th and 6th grade boys are still in unchanged in voice and should not be expected to sound "older" then they are able.  

Rhythm Pizza with Melody Brogdon

I had the pleasure of visiting Melody Brogdon @ West Point Elementary. The day I visited she was teaching about different note values. She was so creative and came up with a system called Rhythm Pizza. Each layer of the pizza represented a different note value and each note value was appropriately divided against the previous layer. Here are a couple pictures of the kids putting them together.

The kids had a lot of fun putting the pizzas together and learned about note values and division at the same time. 

After the Pizza challenge Melody and I taught the kids Pizza, Pizza Daddy-O!  Only we changed the words a little bit.  It went something like this...

"Annie ate some pizza,

Pizza, Pizza Daddy-O

How do you know it?

Pizza, Pizza Daddy-O

Cuz She told me 

Pizza, Pizza Daddy-O

Then, we taught the kids some movement that represented the value of each different note type.  Ex:

Whole note = big circle with the arms

Half note = two big stomps

Quarter note = 4 pats on the legs

Eighth note = clapping 8 times

Sixteenth note = rubbing hands together quickly

We put it all together with a new chorus that goes like this ...

(Leader) Give me a whole note!

(Class with movement) This is a whole note, whole...note...Pizza, pizza Daddy- o

(Leader) give me a half note.

(Class with movement). This is a half note, half note, half note...Pizza, Pizza a Daddy-o

The leader gets to call out any note he or she wants to, in any order and the class responds  each time with the movements and words followed by Pizza Pizza Daddy -o!

So much fun!  I wish I had a video of it, but we were having way too much fun with the kids to stop.   Thanks Melody for sharing your class with me!

PS. You can find this song, with a lesson plan, in the USOE songbook, also known as 100 Favorite Songs!  Click here for the song.

Backup Plans

Hi teachers! One of the challenge a lot of new teachers run across is having a backup plan when their lesson doesn't go as planned. Even seasoned teachers hit a brain block and want fresh ideas.

One of my favorite backup plans is books. They are ready to go lesson plans, and you can adapt them to your class. The easiest books to grab and use on the fly are the books that are a song already, just put into a book. Iza Trapini has written a lot of them. Just search your favorite folk song at Barnes and Noble and see if there is a picture book for it. We have a book list full of other book ideas here, too: click here

Games are another great backup plan; especially games that can be student led. (For those times you need to be working with one student alone, but you don't want to lose the rest of the class.)
Here are a few game ideas: Enjoy!

The Name Game
Grades: upper
Equipment: none
Objective: become king or queen
Play: Students perform the following ostinato on quarter notes: pat, clap, snap, snap. To start play, the King/Queen says his/her name on the first snap, then a different student's name on the second snap. Play continues. Whichever student messes up the steady beat has to go to the end of the circle, and everyone else moves up one seat closer to becoming the king/queen.

Rhythm Telephone:
Grade: 1-6
Equipment: optional, premade rhythm patterns on flash cards
Play: Students are lined up back to back. Choose whether you want to play this in teams, having multiple lines/rows, or one long line as a class. Teacher either shows the last person in the line a rhythm, or taps it on that students shoulder. That students passes the rhythm by tapping it on the next students shoulder, and so on until the rhythm gets to the last student. Check to see if the rhythm stayed the same, or if it was altered.

The next couple games are from A Galaxy of Games for the Music Class, by Margaret Athey and Gwen Hotchkiss.

Add a Clap
Grades: k-2
Equipment: none
Directions: the first player claps any pattern on a predetermined number of beats (suggest 2 or 4). The second player immediately repeats that pattern and adds a pattern of his own (same length). Each new player repeats the patterns of the previous players, adding his/her own new rhythm until play becomes impossible.

What Did I Jump
Grades: k-2
Equipment: none
Directions: Player A is chosen to be "it." He jumps a rhythmic pattern and asks player B to to repeat the pattern. Player B then jumps the same pattern. A correct response earns the privilege of being "it."

Instruments Around the Room
Grades: K-3
Equipment: A rhythm instrument for each player. Piano, other instrument for the teacher, or recording.
Directions: The chairs are arranged in a single circle. on each chair is a rhythm instrument. Each player stands behind the instrument of his choice. At a signal from the teacher, all of the players accompany the piano or recorded music. When the music stops, each player stops playing, moves to the next chair, and prepares to play a new instrument. People who fail to stop or start on signal are eliminated from the game. If a teacher is pianist, it works well to ply three certain chords between instrument that always mean "ready!" Set!" Play!" C, F, and G7 chords work fine!
Variation: If melody instruments are used, we recommend using the C pentatonic scale (c-d-e-g-a) and restricting your piano playing to the key of C.

Rhythm Puzzle:
Grades: 3-8
Equipment: None
Directions: It stands in front of the class and claps the rhythm of a familiar song. He calls on the other players to name the song that he is clapping. The player who names the song correctly gets to be "It" for the next round.

Skating the Blue Danube

One of the songs the Utah Symphony will be playing this year is the Blue Danube Waltz, by Johann Strauss II. I recently got to spend time in Nancy Toone's classroom. The timing was perfect, becuase she had her students skating to the strong beat of the Blue Danube Waltz. 

Here's a short clip of her second graders practicing the strong beat by conducting/moving their arms.

In this clip, sixth graders are skating to the downbeat. Nancy had them use paper plates at their skates. It was so clever and fun, and it really provided an appropriate challenge for all of the students.

Nancy kept the students engaged by having just the girls or the boys skate, having the students partner skate, and having them free skate.

Here's some great background information and history Nancy provided on the Blue Danube and on Johann Strauss II.

Here are a few management tips for success:

• Talk less, do more. We think we need to explain so much to make sure the students understand.  Really think about your explanation ahead, even record yourself, and make it as concise as you can. Often we don't even have to explain, we can just do and the students will copy.
• Before turning the entire class loose on paper plate skates, have one or a few students model correct skating first. Use this as a motivational tool ("Who thinks they can show us how we could stake the strong beat?"), and a chance to give expectations through positive, specific praise. ("Notice how she uses her arms to help keep her balance and stay with the beat," etc.)
• Be firm on your behavioral expecataions. For example, I tell students to "show me with your bodies. If necessary, I remind them "Show me with your bodies, not with your voices." If students are using their voices they must take a watching turn (or whatever consequence you'd like to set) until they can participate appropriately. 
• Present it as a challenge
• "Can you skate without using your voices? I know it's hard, but I bet you can do it!"
• "Who thinks they have good enough balance to keep on their feet?"
• "who can do this while staying in their own space?
• Quickly and concisely point out the desired behaviors with specific, positive praise.
• "Thank you for showing me without using your voice!"
• "Look at Joseph, he used him arms to keep his balance so he could stay on his feet!"
• "Mary and Gracie noticed each other and quickly changed directions to keep in their own space."

Have fun, teachers! Thank you for sharing, Nancy!