Lesson #5: A Rhyme Isn't a Crime!

November 3: Today's lesson was more chill than previous ones, but this was also the lesson in which we utilized the most co-teaching, Mrs. Bevan and I! Mrs. Bevan has been so great at staying connected with the class, helping me with one management idea here and there for the kids when needed, taking pictures, singing the songs, and all around understanding what's going on in the classroom. TODAY, however, she began jumping right in with me to help teach, which was AWESOME! That's our ultimate goal with the BYU Arts Bridge program: not just come in and teach as the music specialist, but mentor the classroom teacher as well so s/he can become familiar with music integration methods and be adept enough to employ these songs, precepts, etc. by themselves. We're getting there; I've been admittedly slow on the uptake of this ultimate goal, but we've got a lot of co-teaching stuff planned for future lessons. Eventually (hopefully) it will be ALL Mrs. Bevan!

Our ritualistic Hello Song began our class today. Then I asked the children if they knew the song

called "Down By the Bay." To my dismay, NOT ONE SOUL knew it! Am I really that old already to have grown up with the ancients living and breathing Raffi songs in my childhood along with almost everybody else in my generation? This was weird to finally bump into kids who didn't know the song. Fortunately, they learned it today! I sang it for them a couple of times for them to get a feel for it, then asked them to repeat the words after me, phrase by phrase. We were now ready to sing-read the story accompanied by the children's book from which to read the lyrics. For the first two verses of the song I kept the class repeating after me so they could get more reps of learning the words, but after that we were all able to sing it in unison together. They got a kick out of each little silly rhyme at the end of each verse: "Did you ever see a goose kissing a moose?" "Did you ever see a whale with a polka-dot tail?" "Did you ever see a fly wearing a tie?" "Did you ever see a bear combing his hair?" "Did you ever see llamas eating their pajamas?" They laughed up a storm each time; it never got old.

When we completed the story, I went back through the pages of these silly rhymes. I repeated sentence containing the words of the rhyme and asked "which two words sound the same here?" Judging from their sheepish answers, I knew I wasn't phrasing the question right for kindergartners to grasp what I was trying to go for. Mrs. Bevan came to my rescue! She turned to the class and refreshed their memories of rhyme, which they have already started learning. She asked what rhyming means (listening for the last half of the word and hearing for what sounds the same). "Let's look at the word 'goose,'" Mrs. Bevan transitioned. "Which word rhymes with 'goose'? 'did you ever see a goose kissing a...'" Everyone exclaimed "MOOSE!" I nodded and smiled gratefully at Mrs. Bevan for saving my lesson. for each rhyming sentence following, I asked it like Mrs. Bevan did to be more clear. This exercise was successful!

As a middle-activity, I assessed the children's understanding of recognizing words when there wasn't a song to put to it, sequencing them from recognizing rhyming words to generating rhyming words. I told them to tell me if the two words I said sounded the same or not. They were able to distinguish rhyming words from non-rhyming words in a jiffy!

Now for the second half of my objective: first I wanted the children to be able to recognize words that rhyme, and secondly I wanted the children to generate their own rhymes. I asked the class to give me an animal by the raise of hand. Half of the students rose their hands after a while. One animal was "fish," and we brainstormed a new verse to sing to the tune of "Down By the Bay:" "Did you every see a fish eating a dish?" "Did you ever see a goat riding a boat?" "Did you ever see a lion who never was cryin'?" "Did you ever see an iguana sitting in a sauna?" (I felt particularly proud of that one; that's fast thinking on the spot if I do say so myself.) The entire class was engaged in thinking of words that could rhyme with the respective animals, including Mrs. Bevan and her assistant, Mrs. Nuansky (spelling?). Mrs. Nuansky kept going back to the computer where they have a rhyming generator to find words that could go with the song. One girl suggested penguin, we were stumped, and according to the computer discovered that that penguin does not have a word that rhymes! One of the other girls was a rhyming whiz throughout the whole thing; the rest of the kids got more accustomed to rhyming by the middle of this new verse activity. Then, we sang my Good Bye Song and I left!

I loved today because of the 100% involvement of Mrs. Bevan and Mrs. Nuansky. They really helped the lesson connect more to kindergartners, something that is really valuable to me as a future teacher, and I love how we all became a thinking tank in coming up with rhymes to sing to "Down By the Bay." It was such a cool experience. I'm excited to involve the classroom teachers even more in forthcoming lessons!