Elementary Music Teaching

Today I want to share some teaching styles of elementary music that I saw last Thursday. I went with a fellow future student teacher to go observe the music class at Jefferson Elementary. We had to get 10 hours of observations in before we could start student teaching in the spring. While it was a pain to have that sprung on us last minute (considering finals and everything else), it was awesome to see the kids really enjoying themselves.

We went to see our future cooperating teacher in action. But he wasn't the one teaching lessons today. Instead it was a good friend of ours who was still in his full teach mode for the last stretch of his student teaching for this semester. This was great for me to see because I never thought that I would see this person up in front of little kids. So I decided to share some of his teaching techniques because they were so effective.

His main lesson was fast/slow throughout all of the grade levels. This involved some very loud drums! The way the kids were learning what was fast and what was slow was with pictures of a turtle and a car. He had made up a story that a car had zoomed by this turtle, and while the picture was being shown to the kids, they were supposed to be hitting the drums REALLY FAST! And then he brought up the turtle picture while saying "I was walking on the street, in the heat, with my feet". He said this a low voice and it sounded very lethargic, but the kids loved it. They were then supposed to be drumming really slow to represent the turtle's walking pace. The best part was that he used a rhyming scheme!

I don't think I've ever seen so many kids have fun with drumming! Some of them were doing a little dance when it was the car :) The best part was my colleague and I got to drum with them! It was very exhilarating!

And just in time for the holidays, the classes learned how to sing Jolly Old St. Nicholas, and then sing it while we all passed a ball around the circle. I think it was very handy that we were there because we have higher pitched voices than the teacher, so the kids caught on really fast. One even said, "Can they play with us? I like the way they sing!" That was totally worth putting in the extra time for observing. 

Have any of you ever got children singing? I had no idea that they loved to do it until now. Please share!