How to Keep Students Engaged During a Pandemic

Last week we continued with April is Jazz month! The kids are enjoying this music so much! Here's what we did... 

Would You Rather (our SEL section of the class): The week's question was Would You Rather spend a day planting vegetables in your garden or spend the day hiking in the woods? There was plenty of discussion about animals in the woods and how much back pain you would have after planting. Some students avoided the question all together by going into the woods, creating a shelter and playing video games. I wasn't quite sure that the answers were rooted in reality but I definitely got many answers that stretched the imagination.

Group Greeting: This month we continue greeting each other in Chinese, with "Ni Hau" and a hand wave.

Brain Hook-Up: More and more students are ready and in position before I even mention "brain hook-up". Love that!

Songs for Humming:  I choose students initially by pulling sticks from a cup. The sticks are "popsicle sticks" with numbers that match the numbers on the chairs. I keep track of the students who are chosen and before I choose those kids again, everyone else has to have had a turn choosing a song. The 2 students chose 1 song each from a group I selected from MusicK-8. This month's songs are Play That Music, Jazz, Jazz Is On It's Way, The Blues and All Jazzed Up.

Rhythmic Reading: we reviewed that notes are measured by beats not seconds. We double checked the length of each note in the sight reading example and then performed it on the chairs or using body percussion (snap, clap pat legs, stamp feet).

Body Percussion: Thank goodness for the talented people who post body percussion videos set to pop music. My students love them and I wouldn't know where to begin to create one. We grooved out to Bill Withers' "Lovely Day" which was also used in the film "The Secret Life of Pets"

We switched the order of the lesson around a little because it made more sense this way. The Instrument of the Week was the bassoon. The two video clips we watched were Dance Monkey and Game of Thrones. When I show these videos, I do not show the entire 2-3 minute video. We watch about 30-45 seconds of each. I post the links to the entire video on Canvas LMS which is the program our district uses instead of Google Classroom, etc. The kids who want to see the whole thing can watch at their leisure.

The Read Aloud was Mister and Lady Day, Billie Holiday and the Dog that loved her. Our town LOVES dogs - they bring them to every event - even to restaurants. So the kids were totally into this book.

So of course our MITS (Musician in the Spotlight) was Billie Holiday. We watched the first minute or so of God Bless the Child.

Savage Love (clean version) by Walk Off the Earth (one of our favorites groups!) was the Bonus Video . 

I hope you found some ideas that you can use in your lessons. If you have any questions, please reach out to me. We are all in this together.

Hang in there, Ellen