Imagine you could get all of your families together in the gym, just doing all kinds of folk dances and play parties and just making music and moving together. How amazing would that be?
You're listening to that music podcast with Bryson Tarbet, the curriculum designer and educational consultant behind that music teacher at the elementary music summit each week, Bryson and his guests will dive into the reality of being an elementary music teacher, and how music can truly be transformative in the lives of the students you serve. Show Notes and resources mentioned in this episode can be found at that music teacher.com.
Hello, and welcome back to that music podcast. I am really excited to dive in today about my family folk dance night that I started doing last year. So if you haven't listened to Episode 87 of the podcast, definitely go back and listen to that, because that kind of talks about my initial reaction to it how it did the first time and kind of why I was working on it and why I decided to, to shift make that shift. So today I'm going to talk about what I'm going through and kind of the process that I'm taking to create this year's folk dance. So for those of you that haven't listened to Episode 87, I do a third grade folk dance night, every November, late November, early December, depending on where the concert lies, I love doing this. I've always done a lot of movement and activities, even before I shifted my performances to this way we're doing a lot of these activities. And by shifting my performance to towards a family folk dance night. It really has kind of made me get creative and find some new folk dances and play parties and things like that, that I wouldn't necessarily have sought out had I not made the shift. So what does it look like to have a family folk dance night? What I love about it is it really like setup wise is so simple, I essentially have chairs set up around the perimeter of the gym. And then the the big old empty gymnasium is kind of what we use as a performance. So I have last year I had a like my little Britney Spears mic on so that I could kind of talk from where I was, this year, we've upgraded our sound system, thank goodness, I'll be able to use a wireless mic. That doesn't make me look kind of foolish. But I essentially become the the collar or, you know, kind of talking through why we're doing this with the parents. So for instance, if we were going to come in and do an activity, I would talk about why are we doing folk dances, you know, because there's a lot of reasons why I do folk dances. So they are another way for students to explore music, especially music of different cultures a lot of times, but it also is really good for formal analysis and hearing and not counting, you know, alright, we're gonna do eight steps this way to eight steps that way, but hearing how that changes in the music and hearing how the different phrases work together, those are some really good standards that are there. So what I actually do is I actually print out some of these standards on basically as many as that I can put on in on my, the program, like depending on how many, you know, kids are on like the class list of things like that I might have more room at the bottom than others. But I like to put in there very parent friendly language why we're doing this? Because yes, it looks cool. Yes, the kids are having fun. But there is a lot of musical concepts, or there are a lot of musical concepts that we're going through. And I want the parents to know that I want them to know that it might look fun, and it is fun. But it isn't just for fun. And I think that's something that we as music teachers can sometimes overcorrect on we like to make make us known that we are you know we're doing real music. And sometimes we forget to just be really honest and say sometimes doing real music just looks like having fun because it is it doesn't necessarily need to look as rigorous as it actually is on the inside. So I actually started preparing for this performance, actually last year in second grade, because I want my students to have a lot of repertoire. And when I say repertoire, I mean a lot of movement repertoire. And if I'm being honest, I've been doing movement, movement repertoire all the way since kindergarten in one way or another because I already had that positive experience with a third grade performance last year, which full transparency was just a test to see if it would work. I knew that I wanted to have a lot more for and for my third grade performance this year. So at the end of last year, I did a lot of movement and play parties and folk dances with my my second graders because I knew I need them to have this repertoire. Even if we didn't necessarily do the play party. Maybe we learned the song and did something else with it. Or some way so that I didn't have to teach everything brand new. Some things we could kind of like take out of the vault and show off maybe in a new way or in a way that we haven't shared before. Something that I think we forget a lot of times when we're doing movement activities like folk dances and things like that, is that we need to sequence that as well. We can't expect them to be doing these really complicated movements. If they can't make circle. So how there you know, in my curriculum, I have a lot of musical concepts that go throughout the different years. But I also like to think of different movement things. Like when am I going to teach that? When are we going to learn about a long way set? kindergarten, first grade, making a circle is a big thing. Sometimes the second grade being in a circle is another thing. But those are kind of the big things that I really want to work on. Second grade into third grade, we start doing things like long way sets, which if you don't know, are just two parallel lines that are facing each other. It's a common set up in a lot of play parties. So how can we give them that that vocabulary of things so that we're not starting from scratch every every time, so every single time I students get a long way set, and I don't care if they've been been doing it forever, forever, I always have them repeat where, you know, what is this formation called. And if they don't know, then I tell them, but if they do know, we either either way, whether they know it or not, we say a long way set and everyone says long way set, and we say two parallel lines to parallel lines, it's just another way of showing that another way of getting them exposed to it. Because what I love about this, is if we've already learned Pop Pop app, which is a really cool play party, and I want to teach Alabama gal, I don't have to go through the whole process of alright, we need two parallel lines, they
need to be facing each other, they need to be equal, equal higher. Alright, make me a long way set. And after some practice, they can make me a long way set. So when you're setting yourself up, especially if you're doing a something like a family folk dance night, like I do, is make sure that you're sequencing things in order. So you're starting with the simple movements, and then you're getting into the complex movements. One of my favorite play parties is great big house. It is a complicated play party. But what I love about it is, it's really not as complicated as it looks, it looks really complicated. And teaching it is kind of clunky. I've, I've definitely gotten better at teaching it. But it's it, it's one of those things where you just kind of have to do it. And the kids, it makes so much more sense by doing it, rather than talking. So making sure that you're starting with simple things. For instance, in great big house, we have to make a circle. So if they don't know how to make a circle, what are those prerequisite skills, so we're not going to move on, we need to work on making a circle, they need to make sure they have having every other person. So have we played games or things like that, where there have been every other people like maybe I give a tie to every other person, that's what I use in my room? Or have we done some things where we, you know, step side by side, what are some ways that we can make it easier when we're teaching the new thing by already giving them a vocabulary of movements for the things that they already know. So like I said, we go through the process of learning these through a long period of time. So we've been doing folk dances and in play parties and things like that. Like I said last year, but also pretty much since we've started and not started this year, I'm not saying that's all we've done. But I've been doing a lot of a front loading so that we can have that vocabulary of repertoire for the performance. So the way the performances work again, go ahead and listen to episode 87 To get my kind of initial thoughts. But the way that they're gonna work this year is I'm actually changing a few things. First of all, in Episode 87, I talked about the first time I had my, my parents and my grownups and my families, I think they join in for like two or three different things. I want that to be more I want them to honestly join us for most things, I want them to be able to, to get a really good understanding of all the different things. One thing last year, my third grade class was huge. So we there were certain things that we couldn't just have everybody joining us all the time, because just having the 2/3 grade classes was just too many people in that space we were in. So now that we have a little bit of a smaller class in the current third grade class, there are different activities that I'm going to be able to do. One another thing that I'll be honest, as I'm recording this, I don't know if I'm actually going to have the courage to do it. But I really want to, and I'm hoping that I do because I think it'll be really, really cool. I think it would be absolutely so much fun for the last song or one of the one of the activities to be brand new for the kids brand new for the grownups and essentially learn it together. So I'm really thinking of doing a folk song of that are folk dance that they've never done before him. I don't know what that might be. But I want to take them through the process of learning it or breaking it down into the chunks of seeing how things repeat about guessing what comes next, or what is happening in the music when this happens. I think that that one would just be really cool to show. But I think it's also just a really good piece of advocacy. Showing that yes, all these different things that you've seen today looks really cool and was a lot of fun. But there are so many musical concepts that are going through here and this is how we broke it down into these different steps. So again, I'll be honest, I don't know if we'll end up doing it. That is something I really hope to hope to do. And when we when I record the monthly check in episode I hope that I can share that we're doing that because I just think that would be so cool to allow the grownups and the stakeholders to see it a little bit of a different light. So if you're thinking about doing a family folk dance tonight, I want to give you some practical advice. First of all, make sure the students know the different formations that you'll likely need to use. So for instance, if you're having them do a lot of things with long way set, labeled, as long as you show them, let them know that, hey, we're going to call this a long way set, if I ever asked you to make a long way set, this is where we're going to be, work on some other things where there's a combination of songs that you're singing with, as well as maybe a folk dance that has a recorded accompaniment that way you can, you're not necessarily singing the whole time, because that singing, singing and moving is a lot, we need to give our students some time to breathe, which is another reason why every once in a while in during the performance, I'll kind of take a step back and kind of walk the parents through it, the grown ups through it, so that we're not we're not completely getting those students out of breath. Because moving is a lot of singing and moving is a lot. So what can we do to make sure we're having a balance of, you know, songs that are sung and songs that they're listening for. That's a definitely a big tip that I would do, I definitely have learned that the hard way. And another thing that I really think would be a good hit really big tip is make sure that expectations are clear. So last year when this was the first time I did it, I didn't want my my grownups and my families to show up thinking it was gonna be a traditional performance and be just completely caught off guard, I made it an all the letters that I sent home and all the dojo messages and everything it was this is an interactive event, we would love for you to join us we would love for you to, you know, to come up and and do some movement with us. And I always made it very clear in the letters is due to the nature of this event, comfortable clothes and tennis shoes are encouraged because yes, I love dressing up. I love seeing the kids dressed up for the performance and being so excited. But if we are not dressing for what we're actually going to do, that's again, a lot of another disconnect. So I want to be very clear from the very beginning, that this is going to be an active event I hope this episode has inspired you to at for nothing else, try something new whether or not it be a family folk dance night, or just adding more folk repertoire into folk dance repertoire into your, your curriculum, I think that there is just so much value in movement. The ADHD person inside me will always be pro movement, but also just the curricular concepts and just, there's just so many reasons to include movement. So especially if you have the space like I'll be honest, I'm so blessed with the space that I have. I would be doing a disservice to my classroom if I did not use that for movement. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to us. 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