First Full LPs

Today is the day for new beginnings. Let me note that I am not feeling 100% present. I was sick yesterday afternoon and woke up feeling so-so and a little weak. I am determined to not miss any days of student-teaching, but that is based only on fate. I'm just glad I was feeling better than I was yesterday!

Kindergarten this morning...oh, dear. They come from 8:15-8:45, which means that neither the class nor me were awake this morning. I think my coffee yesterday made me sick, so I did not have my intense caffeine boost this morning. Nonetheless...both class and teacher needed HELP today.

High and Low lesson--expanded lesson from original mini-lesson! I thought the Kindies didn't have the lesson today. I found myself floundering because they had already heard the "We sing HIGH" and "We sing LOW" portion of the lesson. I found myself having to use more songs I happened to put on my playlist to ID high and low pitches. That was lucky. We ran out of things to do for that one, too, but I had one last piece we could work on in a march. We exited on "Well, you walk...and you STOP!" and simply marched/slid/tip-toed/walked on the beat. One thing Tracy suggested was to try to talk about high and low in that last song, which would have been a good wrap-up activity emphasizing the high and low concept.

3rd Grade went much, much better. I had a little more practice on a bulk of this lesson, and even though some of the lesson was review, we had a good time. We talked about meter (duple vs. triple) and used Bluegrass examples to identify and practice listening for duple and triple. Things got a little redundant with the meter work by the end of the lesson. The other purpose of this lesson: to analyze folk! We listened, analyzed words, analyzed feelings, and analyzed stories. Note that it is better to talk about upbeat ballads rather than slow ones. "Sweet Afton" by Nickel Creek almost put my 3rd Graders to sleep. I planned on asking them to march out to "Tom Bombadil," but we ran out of things to do...until I realized we were really going over-time. I'd like to try a dance at the end for "Tom Bombadil," since it has an overall feeling of 2. If we can do a circle dance, it would work well. I'm looking forward to trying that tomorrow.