With my lower grade students, I begin each lesson with our "greeting song of the month." I have found over the years this has multiple benefits for the students.
1) It provides consistency of format. Students learn better when they know what to expect. My lower grade (PK-2nd) students know that when they arrive in my classroom, I will quickly take attendance (using my iPad and the iDoceo app - discussed in an earlier post), then we will sing our greeting song of the month. This will be followed by me stating the objective for the day. A series of activities related to that objective will follow. Then we will close the lesson by revisiting the objective and reviewing what we did to address it.
2) It can provide great content for your objective. For example, we sang "Gilly Good Morning" in February. My first graders were working on their melody skills. "Where in the song did you hear this pattern: so-mi-do?" Then we played a do-so ostinato to accompany the song. I will be reviewing the concept of tempo this month with my kindergarten students. We are singing "I Will Sing Hello" and I put the recorded accompaniment through Audacity and made one version with an extremely fast tempo and another with an extremely slow tempo. When the students arrive, I will have them sing the greeting but use one of the altered recordings and ask, "Something didn't sound right. What do you think it was?"
3) Because I change the song on the first day of every month, it is a great way to make that connection to the regular classroom (especially for pre-K and kindergarten). "Today it is no longer March. What month follows March on the calendar? Yes! April! So, you know what that means...it's time to change our hello song...
Songs I use:
"Hello There"
"Hello There" (for October, I play it on an electronic keyboard using a pipe organ sound and change the key to C minor...the students love it)
"Howdy" (from Music K-8 Magazine Vol. 14 No. 1)
"Hello" (from Music K-8 Magazine Vol. 1 No. 5)
"Hello, How Do You Do?"
"Gilly Good Morning"
"Fanga Alafia" (from Music Express Vol. 7 No. 4)
"I Will Sing Hello"
"It's So Good to See You"
Since we begin school in August (usually for just a week) I use the same song for August/September. If your school year continues into June, you may wish to do the same (May/June) or...if you go further into June, you can always use that time to use each of the previous songs as a review. Of course, if you are in a year-round situation, you can always add more!
Until next time...
