L.O. #3 26/02 ♥

Attendance for today : Me & Wen Ye.

Oh by the way, this is Benedict writing the post again T.T

Isaac & Benjamin were forced to go for the C div match support, can't be helped.

Left RI at 1.45, arrived at ~3pm. Left at 5.15.

1st, a summary of the day's happenings, then going more into the detailed stuff.

A few of the choir members were absent today. Namely, Phyllis & Noelle. For those of you who can't remember, Phyllis is the one who was spamming "I love you!" throughout our last observation. Noelle is the rather noisy one; Mrs. Tan (the older teacher) is always sitting next to.

Today's Choir lesson was observation again. Though, we did our own little bit of teaching as well.

We revised Grace Orchard's school song, and learn something new called "Bugles' Calling".

Short song, three lines. Quite suitable I guess for our choir.

Ms. Phoon tried to get the choir to do a canon, but wasn't very successful.

Discussed our Proposal with her after the choir lessons - and left GOS before they started singing the National Anthem.

Okay, now for the fully detailed stuff. I'll try to write as much as possible so Isaac & Benjamin will catch up on what they've missed.

Our warmups today were very short. We did the "candle-blowing" thing, from 5 to 10, with varying speeds. After that, we did "Laughing is Contagious" a few times, from E5 up till D6 (that's the D above high C). Also did the "ma mi mu me mo" exercise.

Oh, and the "Hello, how are you?" warm-up too.

We did something new today, our first "teaching" element. I suppose this kick-starts our actual teaching stuff. Simple warm-up, we moved our hands up and down and followed it with our voices. Also, we did a "copying" warm-up.

Meaning, Ms. Phoon would clap a rhythm, or sing a tune - and the children would imitate her. It seems to be quite effective in teaching them some stuff. For instance, Ms. Phoon would clap the rhythm of a part of the Grace Orchard song. The kids wouldn't realize it, but I observed that she was using it to lead them into the later part of the lesson (singing).

Anyway, we moved on to the Grace Orchard song after that. Ms. Phoon drilled the lyrics into them first; by the use of some memory exercises. Since the choir is comprised of kids, this would seem to work well.

She (or someone else) had written the lyrics to the school song on the whiteboard. Ms. Phoon then erased a few words (for example, "a happy place, a joyful place" became "a _____ place, a ______ place". The kids then had to fill in the blanks. Most of them were quite successful.

A key point to note here is something about the school song. It's quite simple, just 1 melody line and that's all. We're going to have to do something about it - writing a harmony or bass line, or something. I guess it'll be either Wen Ye's or my job - I think I can get my sister help me write it, she used to do MEP in secondary school =/

Next, we did "Bugles' Calling".

Can't really remember the lyrics... the tune was quite simple, but our choir was a little slow at grasping it at first.

Ms. Phoon told us that we'd probably need at least one month to teach them such a simple song. I know the song only has 3 lines, but well... I'm sure we all know the condition our choir is in.

We'll really need to put in a lot of effort into planning our lessons...

Well, next Friday we have been forced to take up the roles of teachers.

Wen Ye & Isaac, you guys better do your job. =/

Since I'm expecting the choir would have ~full attendance next week, then I think we can start them on rhythm classes already. Anyway, if we're doing purely rhythm then we have no need for warmups. Please take note that they have short attention spans... so we'll need to vary our activities as such.

Well, I've got nothing much to say - Wen Ye, if you can think of anything then please tell me and I'll add on to this post. kthxbai ~

Edit 1: Oh ya, forgot to add this point. Today the guy who was kept saying "Phyllis shut up!" last week (Shawn, was his name? can't remember) was singing Michael Jackson's Billy Jean throughout the three breaks that we had =.=

Well, apparently his father bought a MJ DVD and he listened to it. Apparently he's trying to imitate the moonwalk etc now... Ms. Phoon told him to sing something else, like the Jackson 5's "We are the children" (can't remember the title =.=!)

I think we'll infer from his actions and Phyllis' "I love you!"s last week that our children are rather impressionable. So, two things I'd like to point out.

1 - We can actually use this to our advantage. Repeating something that they (may be able to) relate with may help them learn a lot better. Put it this way, they will remember stuff much better, no? =.=

2 - We'd better watch our language. Lol. You wouldn't like our choir to be like "**** **** ****" etc during our practices would you? =.= it'd be rather... erm... not ideal.

*reserves space for any edits if I have to*