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Meeting with a group of Oakdale School second-graders one afternoon last week, Bryan Bigelow began his music class, as usual, with a greeting and “The Hello Song.”
But things really got going as the students performed the Irish folk dance they learned the week before – enthusiastically walking in circles, clapping, jumping up and down, and contracting the circle before expanding it again.
“I usually save a lot of movement stuff for January and February to keep them moving around, or else they’ll get stir-crazy,” Bigelow said of his folk dancing unit.
Next on the class agenda, the students listened to “Sliding,” a piece of American folk music from Phyllis Weikart. On Bigelow’s direction, most of the kids closed their eyes, raising their hands when they heard the music change. “Nice job,” he said when they did so.
He asked how many sections were in the song. Kyra Tolley, 7, said three.
“Excellent. There were three different sections,” Bigelow said, so there would be three different parts of the dance.
First, they took eight steps forward going around a circle, and then tried eight steps going backward. They put it together, as Bigelow played a wood block, keeping the beat. Finally they added Weikart’s music, performing the A line of the song.
For the B line, they took four steps toward the center of the circle, then four steps back out. On the blackboard, where the B line was written, Bigelow taught them what the “repeat” symbol was – meaning they would do the B line two times. Their circle was somewhat oblong, so they tried again.
The hardest part was the C line, in which the students repeatedly did a “heel-toe” movement with one foot.
Bringing it all together, they did the whole thing from the beginning. They weren’t uniformly in step – “crash course,” Bigelow said at one point – and the circle was more like a swollen vortex as the kids went in and out, but that was okay.
“Nice job. Give yourselves a round of applause,” their teacher said, and they clapped.
The period also included a few exercises on rhythms. In one, Bigelow placed flash cards with musical notes and rests on the ground. He played a rhythm on an African drum called a djembe, and two students tried to find the corresponding card on the floor.
The last activity, naturally, was “The Goodbye Song.”
Meeting with a group of Oakdale School second-graders one afternoon last week, Bryan Bigelow began his music class, as usual, with a greeting and “The Hello Song.”
But things really got going as the students performed the Irish folk dance they learned the week before – enthusiastically walking in circles, clapping, jumping up and down, and contracting the circle before expanding it again.
“I usually save a lot of movement stuff for January and February to keep them moving around, or else they’ll get stir-crazy,” Bigelow said of his folk dancing unit.
Next on the class agenda, the students listened to “Sliding,” a piece of American folk music from Phyllis Weikart. On Bigelow’s direction, most of the kids closed their eyes, raising their hands when they heard the music change. “Nice job,” he said when they did so.
He asked how many sections were in the song. Kyra Tolley, 7, said three.
“Excellent. There were three different sections,” Bigelow said, so there would be three different parts of the dance.
First, they took eight steps forward going around a circle, and then tried eight steps going backward. They put it together, as Bigelow played a wood block, keeping the beat. Finally they added Weikart’s music, performing the A line of the song.
For the B line, they took four steps toward the center of the circle, then four steps back out. On the blackboard, where the B line was written, Bigelow taught them what the “repeat” symbol was – meaning they would do the B line two times. Their circle was somewhat oblong, so they tried again.
The hardest part was the C line, in which the students repeatedly did a “heel-toe” movement with one foot.
Bringing it all together, they did the whole thing from the beginning. They weren’t uniformly in step – “crash course,” Bigelow said at one point – and the circle was more like a swollen vortex as the kids went in and out, but that was okay.
“Nice job. Give yourselves a round of applause,” their teacher said, and they clapped.
The period also included a few exercises on rhythms. In one, Bigelow placed flash cards with musical notes and rests on the ground. He played a rhythm on an African drum called a djembe, and two students tried to find the corresponding card on the floor.
The last activity, naturally, was “The Goodbye Song.”
Asked what the hardest part of class was, one boy said the heel-toe.
“I think it was walking backwards,” said Grace Barrett, 7.
Bigelow, 25, who has been teaching in Dedham for three years – he works at both Oakdale and Avery – said his first- and second-graders do lots of singing games, learning about sounds. They start to read rhythms in second grade.
He said the hello and goodbye songs help get kids in the right mindset for music class, and for leaving it.
“I think that helps them transition in and out of music, because that can be difficult at that age,” he said.
Dedham Transcript staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.
