Elementary Methods
January 13th, 2010 by vincebates
I love to see the smiles on my students’ faces as they participate in singing games and rhythm activities the first day of the semester. The elementary education majors especially come to class worried that it will be a regular stuffy class where you’re supposed to prefer some kinds of musics and musicings over others and where its necessary to put people on the spot–to make them sing in alone in front of others–and to establish and/or uphold a hierarchy of musicers relative to some abstract, set-in-stone, set of musical standards. I like to put their minds at ease on the first day and have some fun. We played a Name Rondo by Kay Leto, a wonderful music teacher in Las Vegas, and Down in the Valley (two by two). We also did some echoing to show the possibilities beyond the ta-ta-ti-ti-ta (do-do-do de-do; 1 2 3& 4) pattern that elementary teachers around here do to signal silence from their students. And, they smiled and laughed. They said it was because these activities broke the tension, were fun and different, it wasn’t like their other classes, it was challenging yet attainable, it involved group interaction, etc. We had some fun, plain and simple . . . and that’s okay.
