Back at it.

My blog is back! I haven’t been able to access it for a couple of days, but now it’s back and I’m happy!

At school this week, we’re working towards our Thanksgiving assembly that will take place on Friday afternoon. I’ve been working on a number of Thanksgiving-y pieces with all of my classes.

Grades 4, 5, and 6 are all working on “A Thanksgiving Day Canon” *** by D. Asplund and S. Norlund (from the book, “From Hayrides to Sleighrides”

Grade 3 is working on the speech poem (with speech ostinatos and instrumental accompaniment), “I’m Glad I’m Not a Turkey” by D. Asplund and S. Norlund (from the book, “From Hayrides to Sleighrides”

Grade 2 is working on “A Turkey Named Bert” – a poem and movement piece from the Grade 2 “Share the Music” text.

Grade 1 is working on “Gobble, Gobble” from “An Orff Mosaic from Canada” which is an ABA form piece. The children sing the song for the A section, and then I improvise on a djembe while they move around the room like turkeys for the B section.

*** Major learning experience for me this week with the grades 4, 5, and 6 classes. On monday morning, I taught 6 classes, 2 each of grade 4, 5, and 6. They were all learning “A Thanksgiving Day Canon” for the first time. In the first class, we quickly reviewed the concept of a “canon” and then I taught them the song. We then divided into groups and sang it as a canon. Then, I brought them to my Orff area to learn the instrument parts. Stupid me, I only had one person try each part at a time. I tried to get all of the students doing body percussion while the one student was actually playing the part on the proper instrument, but I had major discipline issues.

As the morning went on, I grew smarter. I have no idea why I didn’t just start it out this way – but I finally realize what I was doing wrong and why I was having so much trouble keeping everyone quiet. I don’t have many glocks, and I only have one each of alto xylo, alto metallophone, soprano xylo, and soprano metallophone, but I had enough instruments for every two students. I split the students into pairs and gave each pair an instrument. Then, we went over the body percussion for each part, and then partner 1 played the part on the instrument, then partner 2 took a turn. We switched back and forth a few times. Then we went onto a new part, and eventually got 2 parts going at a time.

Next day, we’ll review the parts we know and add in the last 2 instrumental parts.

Looking back, I feel like such an idiot! Of course I was going to bore all of the other kids by only having one student play at a time. I knew it, I learned not to do it – but for some reason, I still did it. They don’t have to learn the alto metallophone part on the alto metallophone at this stage, they can learn it on a glock or a xylo and then transfer when we get the parts down.

I realize that I need to keep everyone engaged and active in the music making.  I’ll just chalk it up to my own inexperience (I’ve only been a “real” teacher for a month so far!). Definitely a learning experience, though! I’ll never do it that way again!