Year 5
26.09.16
Reinforce the Learning
This week the lesson takes place in the regular classroom of this class because the Music Room is being used for some P4C training http://www.philosophy4children.co.uk/. I kick off the lesson by reminding the class of their ‘Class Challenge’. I always give a small challenge to each class to practise something ready for the next lesson. Ideally they will have perfected it. I always keep a record of the classes that have done it or failed to do it.
Sometimes simply doing it during the week isn’t enough, it needs to be done well in the lesson to count! So immediately this particular Year 5 class are expected to sing ‘Mrs White’ in canon. They do so with relish. It’s a simple song but to sing it successfully as a canon still requires a level of concentration that would tax many adults.
It’s so easy for them that I sing another song ‘Fuzzy Wuzzy’ as they sing their canon. This passes without incident so the class insist on making it harder still. In four groups both Mrs White and Fuzzy Wuzzy are sung in canon simultaneously. Both songs being pentatonic there is no dissonance. Another Year 5 group later in the week could not really manage this extension but this class can. And they enjoy the challenge!
I sing Hello Everyone a few times and the class echo this showing that they recognise the pitches I am singing by naming the pitches and showing the handsigns for these pitches. I switch to pointing at the four pitches that the class know on a vertical ‘ladder’ (la, so, mi and do written as ‘l s m d’). After a few pitches I make it harder by including some phrases from the song ‘On a Train’ that have quavers in. Some in the class recognise the song and name it. We sing it together and then establish that the first half and the second half, though very similar, are not identical due to the slightly different rhythms. This preciseness of understanding is essential to good musicianship and is by no means beyond any child’s grasp.
On the theme of trains, I then introduce a game I learned about in the National Youth Choir of Scotland’s ‘Go for Bronze’ scheme of work. It’s an excellent resource. The Scottish are ahead of the English when it comes to a national scheme of music education like this. My cousins moved to Scotland many years ago to take advantage of the Scottish education system. I think it’s probably still better than the English system today. There’s less wrongheaded political interference in Scotland so there are more people who actually know about and care about education in charge of it all. Anyway, the game involves standing in a line and tapping a rhythm on the shoulder of the person at the back. This person passes it on to the person in front and so on. The person at the front has to write it down (in ‘rhythm sticks’). In the classic Kodály way I include semiquavers (tikka tikka) to reinforce this new rhythmic ‘element’ that has only very recently been ‘made conscious’ i.e. named. The children really like this game. I had never done it with a class before so I was relieved that they did. It could have been a disaster. That’s teaching for you!
After this I sang ‘I’ve Been to Harlem’ to the class. They have heard this song a couple of times by now. Everyone has to put their hand up whenever the word ‘over’ appears. This is to prepare them for a game where a ball is passed around a circle and then passed across the circle whenever the word ‘over’ is sung. It requires concentration and by the end of playing the game everyone knows the song.
To finish I sang the class ‘Lil’ Liza Jane’. A lot of the songs I like to work with seem to be American or Canadian. I have selected this song because it can be sung at the same time as a song that they know: ‘Chicka Hanka (Captain Go Sidetrack Your Train)’.*
This particular class really enjoyed the lesson. Neither of the other Year 5 classes liked it as much as this class. It’s because this class is more willing to sing. I teach music through singing. Sometimes I think I should make more use of instruments in order to entice the non-singers. And then I think it’s just a question of working with them when they are young so that it becomes second nature. And that’s what I’m doing because I teach every child in the school right down to the youngest of all.
* See ‘How Can I Keep from Singing’, a collection of songs by Celia Waterhouse, for more details on this.