Animal Adaptations

Hello again! I'm back! Jordan Ridge is back from being off track, and I've returned to (somewhat) full health after being a bit ill last week.

I emailed Ms. Wright prior to this class and asked her what things the class was learning about that might be interesting to teach to music. One of the things she mentioned was that they were learning about animal adaptations in science. I love animals, so this was a fun lesson for me to plan.

When I was planning, I found a couple somewhat strange, yet entertaining music videos about animal adaptations.

"The hump on my back is packed with fat, won't say it again cause you know all that."- rapping, dancing animated camel.

These...uh... didn't exactly make the cut, but they were entertaining nonetheless- hah! I was singing both songs to myself as I was planning my lesson. ♩ adap, adaptaaationss...♩

For my real lesson, we started out with the clapping/listening game again. The students have responded well to it, so I did a little bit more with it this time. I clapped three songs, and told the students to think about what they all had in common. The songs were:

1) Baa Baa Black Sheep
2) Old MacDonald
3) The Itsy Bitsy Spider

Of course, the topic here was animals! This helped me segway into the next part of my lesson.

I told them that I'd heard they were learning about animal adaptations in science class, and I asked them what they were, and what some examples were. They were hesitant at first, but once Ms. Wright hopped in and referenced a chart they had done, the hands were flying up.

After this little conversation, I handed out a worksheet to the kids (my first worksheet! Oh boy!).

I put the top half up on the document camera, and we sang through the song (to the tune of "Are You Sleeping?"). A little more singing-friendly than the rap videos from earlier...

I then told them that they got to compose a song about animal adaptations. I told the students what measures were, and had them compare the first and second measures (same), third and fourth measures (same), fifth and sixth measures (same), and seventh and eighth measures (same- surprise, surprise!). This is a little precursor to identifying the form of a piece, if you will.

In retrospect, I could have taken it a step further and assigned letters to each section, but oh well. I'm in this to learn also, aren't I? That's my favorite part about teaching- that I can grow and improve as I help students grow and improve. It's a beautiful cycle, really.

Anyway, the worksheets were a little interesting at first. I had the students get into partners to write the song. We wrote an example one together as a class first, because I could sense that some of the students were confused. I somehow managed to walk away from the school without the example one, so no picture here... sorry. :(

Once the example one was done, I walked around and helped partners as needed. Some groups were done in two minutes, and it took a few others a while to get loose and into the creative process. However, as time went on, they really got the hang of it and responded really well....

Love that this girl added a picture at the bottom.

LOVE that this student decided to write a second verse. Another student wrote an additional verse about a dinosaur, but I didn't get a picture of it. Sad!

We sang through ALL of them (which was a little rough on my weak, sick voice- but worth it!!), and the kids LOVED it. They were SO excited to get to the next song to see what people wrote. One of my favorite things about this is that some of the kids who had been struggling with writing these really responded so well once we began singing through all of these. They were able to finish the rest of their verses quickly when we started doing the other kids' songs. It was nice to see these kids be inspired by their peers.

Jane, my mentor, was visiting class on Friday with me and suggested that the students draw pictures of their animal and turn it into a book! So fun. So Ms. Wright kept the worksheets with her to do just that. I'm excited to see the end result there.

It was amazing to see these kids go from being unsure about the project to downright excited. At the end, all the kids (and I really do mean all of them) wanted extra worksheets so that they could write more verses! Luckily I had over-prepared and printed about 50 worksheets.

But my goodness. Hooray! I love helping kids love music. That's really why I do what I do. Looking forward to more fun and music-loving this Friday.

- Amanda