Counting Down the Days

First hour was quite fun this morning. We summed up what we've learned in rhythm so far. The kids always get a kick out of using the white boards, which is GREAT for review: students who are afraid to speak up in class are able to show you they know the material. The next step is getting them to speak out.

Lizzy commented at one point that while the boys were doing a great job of showing how they were thinking about the material and understanding it, the girls were sitting back and not answering. "I know you know this. Do you want the boys to take over the class, or do you want to show them how amazing you can be? Start getting involved when we ask questions!" The girls perked up a little for the last few minutes of class.

The rest of the day, I was writing notes about each class and what certain sections needed to work on (regardless of whether Lizzy caught it during class). I wrote out specific observations in a notebook that Lizzy took home tonight so she could plan around it. Even though I wasn't teaching, it was still exhausting because I had to be completely on the ball all day.

After school, Lizzy had to go to Smart Board training (or as we call it, "Dumb Board," since it's used and the cords are missing so we can't actually write on it) so I took over the extracurricular sixth grade choir. They meet once a week from now until the pops concert in May. In the fall, I think they just prepare for the winter concert. Their music for the pops concert is a so-so arrangement of Circle of Life, a partner song of Lullaby of Broadway (with Give My Regards to Broadway), and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. I was impressed by how much they remembered from last week, and were still able to do. However, I had to force them to look at the music for Somewhere because the rhythm in their heads was different from what was written.

Working with this group is completely different from working with the choirs, because we have three songs to work on in 45 minutes, and today we only had about half an hour. There's more learning by rote, particularly on songs that have trickier rhythms (ie, Circle of Life). Also, all of the students really want to be there, they're not just joining to try and go to Cedar Point at the end of the year. I loved that some of the girls came in humming the parts they learned last week, and that they seemed to really have fun.

We have two more rehearsals until the Tuesday night Festival preview concert, and the following day the students are writing reflections on the concert recording. Thursday they come in for I think half an hour (oh, the joys of conferences) and there's a professional development day on Friday. Yesterdays rehearsals were all very promising, but today they fell flat. The energy just wasn't there at all, and fourth hour still doesn't know Tomorrow Shall Be... well enough. So we'll see how this works.