Visit #11: The Fours and the Sixes!

Hey there!

This week we were doing (can you guess??) multiplications again!!! This entire multiplication set has been exciting for me because I have been able to integrate so many different art forms with the children. On Friday, I went in and taught them about multiplication through dance. This idea actually originated in the 18th century (surprise history lesson for the students as well!) with dance cards. The idea was that at a formal ball, each lady would be given a dance card at the beginning of the event. Under each dance would be the name of the gentleman that she was supposed to partner with for the duration of the song. This meant that after each dance, she would need to go find each new partner and he would also need to find her. Now to teach this to children, I needed to change a few things: 1. The dance for them was less of a partner dance, and so anyone could have the match to their card, boy or girl. 2. instead of their partner's name on their card, the card contained either a multiplication table, or the answer to one and the students had to find the match to their math problem. And 3. the students were only allowed to look for their partners with their eyes, and not with their mouths. 

When I had taught the kids a little bit of the history behind the activity, I showed them how to do the waltz step and had them practice waltzing around the room. Since I didn't necessarily want them full on partner dancing, I only taught them a single person waltz step instead of the double. 

At the beginning of each dance, the students got into two equal lines and the two leaders handed out a card to each student (one line had answers, the other one had multiplication tables). Once everyone had a card, the music began and the students had to use the waltz step to get around the room to find their partner. Once found, the pair would waltz to the other side of the room and wait for everyone else to finish. The first couple to finish would become the leaders for the next dance. 

Here are some pictures of the students waltzing around looking for the answer to their math problems. 

A lot of them caught on very quickly and you can see in this picture the bent leg of most of them while they completed the up, down, down motion of the waltz step in 3/4 time. 

To keep things interesting, I brought a variety of different waltzes to play for them that required them to pay strict attention to the beat because many of them varied widely in tempo. I even brought in a waltz from the move "Frozen" that a lot of the students recognized quickly and were excited to dance to. 

This is a great assessment, which is why I waited until my last visit to bring it it for the children to experience. Instead of a large group all answering questions together, they had to answer the question by themselves in order to find their correct partner. For this exercise, I brought in the four multiplication tables, as well as the six multiplications, but of course you could supplement any multiplication table, or really any math problem depending on the needs of the students. I was happy to see that the children all responded very well to the activity and it was fun for them to discover which of their friends they would be paired with next. 

Thanks for reading! It's been a blast!

-Kyra 

Visit #10: The Fives

Hello Everyone!

So here we are again, tackling even more multiplication! This time I wanted to work on the five multiplications and so I taught the song Weeevily Wheat again and changed the words to reflect the multiplication table that I wanted to teach. I also brought in an African drum called a Djembe and the students were all very enthusiastic to try it out!
Here is one video of the children singing the music with a very enthusiastic drummer! I have to apologize for my voice being so loud in the recording because I was singing along with the children, but I was closer to the camera than I thought!

The group had only about 6 students because the school was having a separate function that day that these children were unable to participate in. When the class first started, the students were all disheartened because they couldn't go with the rest of the school, but they quickly started to enjoy themselves as they began to sing along with me. When they left, one of the students yelled out "Best non-party EVER!", which I thought was funny because what they were really doing was learning their multiplication tables, but because of the influence of the arts, they really enjoyed themselves.

Thanks for reading!

-Kyra

Visit #9: The Threes

Hello again!

So since this entire term is dedicated to multiplication, I brought in another multiplication activity this week! This time, I decided to focus on the three times tables. Since rhythm is one of the most important aspects for a child's musical education, I brought in a few short poems about multiplication that I set to rhythms. Putting the poem to rhythm helps with memorization and makes committing the poem to long-term memory easier. After getting the rhythm poem together, I wanted to add more musical elements to make the exercise exciting for the students. To do this, I added hand drums, guiros, and some beat boxing. The rhythm I wrote had the drums keeping the beat, the guiros improvising, and the beat boxing subdividing the beat.
When I came into the classroom, the students all caught on quickly to the rhythm of the poem and the light, funny feel of the lyrics. They were also all very excited to play an instrument but what they enjoyed the most was obviously the beat boxing. Because beat boxing is generally associated with men, the boys in the class were eager to participate, whereas with actual singing they sometimes shy away. This makes it a great introduction to making music with your body while leaving out the awkwardness of singing in front of a class.

 Here are the videos from two of the poems that we did in class on Friday.

Until next time!

-Kyra

Visit #8 More Multiplication!

Hello Everyone!

This week I went in again for another lesson on multiplication. Since this entire term is dedicated to multiplication, we've been doing quite a bit of it the last couple of weeks. Since last week we did a musical lesson, I thought this week it would be fun to use art to teach multiplication. In the classroom, we used the number patterns produced by the multiplication tables to create geometric designs on graph paper. Here's what we did:

Every multiplication table has a pattern of the same base numbers. To get this pattern, we need to condense every table into single digit numbers by adding the separate numbers together. For instance, here are the 3 multiplications: 3x1=3, 3x2=6, 3x3=9, 3x4=12, 3x5=15, 3x6=18, and so on. To condense the larger numbers, we add them together so we take 12 and say 1+2=3 and again with 15: 1+5= 6. We can already see the pattern in this one, which is 3,6,9. After you have the pattern, you put the pencil to the graph paper and follow this pattern going first to the right, then down, left, and back up. This would give us 3 to the right, 6 down, 9 to the left, 3 up, and then 6 to the right again. You continue this pattern until you reach your starting point again. This gives us really intricate geometric patterns. The one for 3 is actually one of the simplest ones because the pattern is so small. It looks like this:

At the school, we did the 1 times tables to start out with because all of the answers are already single digit numbers. This design is much more intricate, however, because the pattern is much larger. (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,1,2, etc) Many of the students picked up the pattern immediately and began drawing without too much extra help. For the ones that weren't sure, I projected mine onto the smart board and drew slowly so they could go along with me. This way, each student felt the accomplishment of finishing the drawing regardless of their speed. Here are a few of their finished designs:

This activity is great because it really gets the students thinking critically about the times tables. They start to realize the principle of patterns in numbers and their importance, which not only supplements their learning but can also get them excited about the learning process itself. 

Here is another picture of the 2 times tables put into their geometric design:

Thank you for reading! See you next time!

-Kyra

Visit 7: Multiplication

This past week, I made a visit to the school and we all had so much fun! The students have been learning about multiplication this entire month and last week was especially the 8 times tables. I decided to teach the students a song I know called Weevily Wheat, which is a short song that can help children learn any kind of multiplication tables. I also brought in an African squeeze drum so that the children could make their own rhythms during the song. Once we had learned the music, I let the students use the drum one at a time and make up their own rhythms to accompany the song. I was actually surprised and how enthusiastically all of the children responded to the drum. Not only did they all want to play it, they also sang much more confidently when the drum was accompanying them. Since they were excited about the drum, all the students were happy to sing it as many times as I would allow, and so they all memorized the song by heart very quickly. By the time school was out, they all ran into the hall singing the song as they went.

When class started that day, the students all knew their times tables, but they couldn't just spout out the answers. All of them had to think carefully for quite some time before saying what they thought the answer was to any particular times table. Over time, every student learns them better and eventually we all can recite them quickly but by using the arts to teach the multiplication, the students learned them extremely well, and extremely quickly. After class, I quizzed one of the students on the 8 times tables and he knew them the instant I asked. This is the power of using the arts to teach. Regular subjects can become a joy in the lives of students, and these students can also be exposed to music simultaneously.

This is one of the students with the African squeeze drum that I brought in. He showed a lot of interest in drumming and was one of the only students to get the squeeze technique to work. When

the drum is played and squeezed in the exact right way, it gives the performer the ability to warp the timbre of the drum. 

Visit #5 and #6: It's Christmas Time!

Hello, everyone!

These past two weeks, I had a wonderful time visiting the kids! They have been learning all about Christmas in France and so when I came in last week, I taught them to sing Silent Night in French.  They memorized the words very quickly and were patient enough to sit still while I taught them all about dynamics! We learned all about how pairing certain words with dynamic stress can increase their meaning and how that can positively affect an audience. I brought my guitar and was able to accompany them while they sang, which was absolutely great!
This week, I came in and taught them another more traditional French Christmas song called Le Père Noël. It's all about how Santa is sick on the day before Christmas eve and needs to get better before he wakes up to deliver presents! There are percussion-style coughs, sneezes, and shushing sounds throughout the three verses of the music and so I taught the students about the effect non-musical sounds can have on a piece and on the audience that hears it. Since this song is generally only sung in France, I had some trouble finding a suitable accompaniment for it and so I took the melody line and made my own accompaniment for piano. I'll post the link to the music where you can see it and listen to the accompaniment if you would like! Another exciting thing we got to do this week is play on two full sets of xylophone hand bells! I borrowed these sets from the Brigham Young University Elementary Music Department and the class was able to learn about chords and how to play them! I split the class into two groups and each group was in charge of a chord. Luckily Le Père Noël only has two chords in the whole song so the class was able to accompany themselves, which they seemed to really enjoy. As a bonus, we were able to add this song to the annual Christmas Concert! I'm working on getting a video from it so I can post it on here for everyone to enjoy! Fingers crossed!

https://my.scorecloud.com/song/e6c823f0b4138b562f30ebc82bd36fee/Le-Pere-Noel-Est-Enhrume

This is the link to my accompaniment transcription!

This is a picture of one of the handbell sets that we had. I passed out only f,a,c,e, and g so that we had two chords.

Visit #4: All About Ogres!

Hello everyone!

We finished up our segment on area and perimeter and the next subject is literacy! Every week, the students read a new French story and this week the story is all about an Ogre! We really wanted to give the students a chance to expand their minds a little about ogres before they read the story. Since the children are learning a whole new language, it's best for them if they understand the concept of an English word before they have to learn it in French. This means that we needed an activity that was all about ogres so the students could become more familiar with them! Needless to say, this was a very exciting week, but it was also kind of difficult to find an aspect of the arts that was based on ogres. I couldn't find a song about ogres that was short enough for them to learn in one session, and so I spent some time making one up for them! They seemed to really have a ton of fun with it, and I was so glad to see they were excited about what they were learning. For the musical aspect of it, I taught the students how to use actions with a song to make it more interesting for an audience. They REALLY got into it and I got a ton of students wanting to stand up with me in front of the class and show everyone the actions they had come up with to dramatize the song. Here's a short video that I think you're really going to enjoy of the class practicing the song!