Hey its Wen Ye posting again!
Been pretty busy during the MYEs week, so now I'll be posting on what happened during last week's practice (7th May). Ms Nita Chan took over the choir practice for that week, and I (Isaac and Benedict inclusive) picked up MANY new pointers and methods from her.
To start off, Me, Benedict and Isaac were present during this lesson.
Ms Chan started by stating the ground rules for the lesson - have fun but not be disorderly.
She then did the full body warmups, eg neck/head rotation, body stretching, touch toes, shake legs and hands, squeeze hips.
She then proceeded to vocal warmups, with snake hissing, face chewing and massaging.
Then she made the choir run, jog and jump, then throw imaginary balls at each other. From my observation, the choir really enjoys physical activites, I suppose sitting down for 2 hours isn't fun at all. =(.
Ms Chan also did the "ya-ha-ha-ha-ha" (1-3-5-3-1) warmup and then got the choir to chew their mouths and humm. Imagine chewing a hamburger in your mouth and then humming a note.
Moving on, she made the choristers imagine that they were going underwater, firstly by taking a deep breath, then blowing/raspberrying it the air out. The kids really enjoyed this.
Next up was imitation clapping, where Ms Chan clapped a series of simple rhythms, then got the students to imitate. The students responded quite well, and the clapping was pretty uniform.
She then got the piano to play a prerecorded MIDI file, and then increased/decreased the tempo, and choristers had to adjust their walking speed in relation to the tempo. Another fun activity!
Apart from Imitation clapping, she also did imitation sounds, where she would make a sound like "M" or "N" or "NG" and got the choir to follow. The "NG" sounded quite like an ambulance approaching!
The last of the warmups was the Q&A session, where she personally asked each student a question like "How old are you?" (5-3-5-3) and the chorister would reply "I am thirteen."(5-3-5-3), basically she wanted everyone to repy with a tune, and get them to have their own 5-second solo. Most of the choristers were quite shy, but after coaxing them to sing, the voices that came out were extremely nice! Maybe I should keep my mouth closed more often. Oops.
After the warmups, Ms Chan started on reinforcing the concept of Solfege. She wrote D-M-S on the whiteboard, and when she pointed to each solfege, got the choir to sing it. Pretty in tune, and we can tell that they have got the concept of higher/lower pitch.
She then went on to teach Bugles Calling. One technique we learnt here is that before she got the choir to sing, she first had the choir to listen to how it sounds like in their minds, sort of like thinking before speaking, she asked them to think before singing, and surprisingly, the choir was in tune! For the first few tries though, it was evident that the choristers were abit shy and each member did not want unnecessary attention by singing too loudly, but after a bit of coaxing and reminding, the choir got to a reasonable volume. This is one aspect we have to work into the lessons we plan, getting the kids to concentrate on the song before singing. Also, after she reinforced this new method, she added on by telling the choristers to get ready the tune in their head, and then when singing it out, combine it with the lyrics. Sounds abstract here, but it worked. However, personally, I feel that this is to build the self-confidence of each member, and before we can start on this, we must ensure that everyone has memorized and is familiar with the song in mind.
There was a break here, and the time recorded was 4pm, so it was quite amazing that she managed to complete so much in 1 hour. For the warmups, we learnt that we should breeze through the warmup, and move on to the next warmup after a few tries instead of repeating, so that we can keep the excitement/momentum going.
After the break, she wanted to teach a new song, Glory to God.
Firstly, she wrote out the solfege scale, got the choir to sing it ascending then descending. Afterwards, she removed some of the solfege, and left do-mi-so-la on the board.
To teach the new note la, she pointed to it, demo-ed, then got the choir to sing, Simiarly, she did the same thing when teaching intervals.
To furthur reinforce, she got the choir to sing (1-3-5-6-5-3-1)
She then taught the song by writing the solfege on the board, then drawing a pitch line above the solfege. So for example, the first line went 1-3-5-5-3-1-6-5, and the pitch line would be ascending, descending, then a sharp steep incline. After the choir memorized the line, she added the lyrics below the solfege. The choir managed to learn this line by 4.20pm, or 20 mins since the break started. Impressive.
She then taught the next line (^1--5-3-1-3-4-3-2-3) using the same method, basically, drawing the pitch lines then adding the words.
To end off the lesson, she got the choir to play the telephone game, where she gave a message to each row to pass down to the end. From my point of view, it appeared to me as a recap of the lesson, as she sent messages like claps, solfege signs and tunes.
As there was some time left, she taught the last line, which was 1-1-1-1-1-4-1 with the abovementioned method (use of silence in head) and ended the lesson by 4.45pm.
The next 15 mins was spent testing each individual, and I recorded some notes, and I will upload it during the next RE lesson.
Overall, I learnt loads during this lesson, and many of her ideas were applied during this week's lesson (14 May).
Isaac, Benedict, if you guys have anything to add, feel free to do so.
Wen Ye
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