I'm pleased to have a guest post today by Bryce, a long-time Primary music observer (and my husband). I love how he shares his perspective. He just says it like it is! -Michelle
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| Repeat after me--being on Pinterest does not make it credible. |
Bad ideas are everywhere.
They saturate the news, Facebook feeds, your kids’ every action, and
even lurk in the dark recesses of your own mind. Some are easy to spot, like mixing household
chemicals into explosives that produce lethal chlorine gas without proper
ventilation in the room. Others are a
little subtler, like choosing a primary music activity set that doesn’t teach
or engage the kids in your primary. So
how do you spot these bad ideas? I’m not
a professional, but I’ve sat in enough singing times to recognize a few trends:
1.
Does the activity support only one learning
style (or none at all)?
Sharla Dance, our go-to expert on all things music teaching,
classified childhood learning as fitting into eight basic styles: physical
action, words, visuals, nature (whatever that means), spiritual, logic,
cooperation & teamwork, and… wait for it… music. Check out her blog here.
Each child in your primary class benefits from one or more
of these styles. Because every star is
different and so is every child (I dare you to read that without singing it in
your head), you’ll need to include multiple learning styles within each
activity. I recognize that there’s a
school of thought that it’s okay to address only one learning style per
activity, so long as you have multiple styles in the overall music time. Those
people are wrong. That’s just how it is.
The prime example of a bad idea—one of the worst ideas you could
possibly do—is to simply draw names from a hat and make the kids sing it. (This
includes derivatives like flipping over pictures on a chalkboard and singing
the song underneath.)
The problem here is that this engages none of the
learning styles. For example, there’s
either no visual reference or the pictures are too small to be seen from the
back of the room. Having one kid from the primary come up to draw a song leaves
everyone else sitting still, so there’s no motion element. The word learners
aren’t given any associations or interesting connections to make in order to
internalize the lyrics. Even worse, blindly flipping cards or drawing songs
replaces logical progression with chaos, making the whole experience deeply uncomfortable
for logic learners.
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| Some people learn best through natural processes--like natural selection. |
Always focus on teaching kids the way they need to learn—not based on the first Pinterest board you find
on Saturday night. No matter how cute
the board or bucket for the activity may be decorated, do not be deceived,
those people are trying to lead both you and the kids you teach down to hell.
Let me repeat: If you structure singing time around drawing
songs from a hat, you should be darned to heck (because let’s face it, actual hell might be a little extreme).
2.
Does the idea offer variety?
Anyone who’s ever had kids knows they have short attention
spans. However, those with older kids or whose children are freakishly patient
may have forgotten just how short this attention span really is. I’ve seen goldfish with longer attention
spans than my own children’s. So unless
you’re practicing some sort of witchcraft or hypnosis to keep them riveted, you
will need to switch activities several times.
Along those lines, be very sure to mix up which learning
styles you’re using each time. You could
involve four learning styles in every activity, but if you never engage the
kids who really need to learn through logic, then you’re a horrible person (albeit
not as horrible as the ‘hat’ people) and it will be all your fault when the child
apostatizes later on.
When switching activities, keep focused on your core
learning. People seem to default to a singing
random wiggle song, followed by an unrelated main activity. Instead, try choosing what you want the kids
to learn that week and structure several short activities around the theme to
engage them from a variety of learning styles.
Yes, teaching this way takes more effort and planning, but
that’s just part of the cost of magnifying your calling. If you think that load is too heavy, remember
that you could have been called as
Primary President.
3.
Is the activity exactly the same for both junior
and senior primary?
While the trunky 11 year-olds in senior primary may have the
same attention span as a new sunbeam, their actual needs couldn’t be more
different. If the activity you come
across online is identical for both junior and senior primary, leave a nasty
troll-ish comment and move on.
In one ward, I saw a very well-intentioned music teacher try
to engage the junior primary by sitting them in a circle and having them do a
complex wood-block clicking pattern, complete with passing the blocks left and
right as part of the pattern. Half the
kids didn’t want to share their blocks (surprise there), and the other half
couldn’t figure out which way was left.
In this music leader’s defense, she really is fantastic but was just
having an off day.
4.
Does the idea support on-the-fly adaptation?
There’s an old saying from some philosopher guy with a
Latin-sounding name that goes “It is a bad plan that admits no modification”. If
this ‘fantastic’ idea you found on the internet doesn’t allow you to adapt
on-the-fly, then it’s probably a bad idea.
If the kids aren’t responding well to the activity, then adapt your
lesson immediately.
The hapless music leader in the previous example responded
quickly to the kids and adapted her wood-block patterns to their skill level,
shortened the activity, and then moved on to the next one that engaged a
different learning style. Nice recovery!
Here’s what a good example looks like:
Let’s say that I need to help junior
primary children learn the lyrics to Book
of Mormon Stories. Most of them
can’t read, sit still, or focus on anything for more than a minute at a time. Challenge
accepted.
My first thought is to use
Pinterest. Then I think better of
it. I hate Pinterest. A lot. Instead, by expending a little mental effort,
I come up with a plan that involves…
1. Multiple learning styles: I decide to
use a visual to help create a memory trigger for the lyrics and engage visual learners. However, just slapping some laminated
pictures on the board only engages the visual learners (assuming they can even
see it from the sides or back of the room). I need to get the visuals to the
kids. So I prepare bookmarks with a picture of the story on one side and a key
phrase from the verse on the other. One learning
style, though, isn’t enough, so I add elements:
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If you don't learn to recognize bad ideas, you
may not be able to recognize good ones either. |
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I engage the motion learners by getting them out of their chairs for the
whole singing time. As I sing the verse
a capella to the kids, each class sits cross-legged in a small circle. Their teacher will have a Book of Mormon with
a picture bookmark inside for each child.
The kids take turns leafing through the Book of Mormon to the page with
the pictures inserted. When they find
it, they can take one to keep in their own scriptures.
The collaborative learners can be engaged by helping their
classmates recognize the words printed on the back of the bookmark—a key phrase
for the verse. If we’re working on the Alma
verse, my key phrase would be “Alma was rebellious, and he fought against the
light”. As they learn from their peers and teacher, they can join in singing
that phrase with me each time I repeat the song. The word
learners are also engaged by having a specific phrase that connects their
scriptures, bookmarks, and the verse of the song.
While all this is going on, I
continue singing the verse on ‘loop track’.
To keep the interest of the music
learners, I can alternate between singing the full verse, whistling
softly, and omitting words to keep things changing enough that it doesn’t fade
to the background.
2. Variety: As kids get their bookmarks, I
keep them engaged by giving them new directions. If we’re doing the Alma verse, I use it like
a wiggle song. When I sing “fought
against the right”, I have the kids stand up and throw a couple punches into
the air—specifically where another child is NOT standing. When I sing “an angel came”, they stand
imperiously, and stretch out their hand as though speaking emphatically. When I sing “struck before his brethren”, I
instruct the kids to collapse to the ground, as though unconscious. This will get a bit loud as they moan and
wail dramatically. Remember: the noise
is part of the kids getting invested in the activity; it’s okay.
Notice that I just transitioned
activities here but never had to announce it.
They blended together and kept the kids focused on the song they need to
learn.
3.
Different for junior and senior primary: I’ve focused my plan here
on junior primary, but were I to adapt this for senior primary, I would get
them out of their chairs to come and get the bookmarks first. Their next task would be to find the place in
their scriptures where the bookmark should be placed. (With some guidance, of
course.)
As they looked up the scriptures, I
would also get the kids to alternate whistling along when I sing and then sing
words as I either leave blanks or start whistling.
And yes—they still get the death
scenes. I’m pretty sure the eleven
year-olds will even pantomime burning one of their own at the stake.
3. Adaptability: This can easily be
rearranged and tweaked to fit the kids’ needs.
For instance, we can start with the pantomiming activity and then
migrate down to sit in circles. We could
even skip finding the bookmark in the scriptures portion and hand them out,
asking the kids to tell their class something they know about Abinadi as I hum
or sing in the background. As they get
their bookmarks, I could even have the pianist play the verse in the background
while I dramatically summarize the story of Abinadi for them. The possibilities are nearly endless.
And I didn’t draw a song name from a hat. Not even once!
-Bryce
"OK, instead of that, what Primary songs do you remember?" I asked. I had all my students come up and write a Primary song on the board. A picture of their input is at the beginning of this post. Here is exactly what they wrote:
After they all sat down, I asked, "So tell me now, what did you learn in Primary?" This quiet, prolonged moment of realization was so powerful to me as a high school senior that I was determined to share it with my students. I went through several of the songs they'd chosen, commenting on what they'd learned. They'd learned that they were children of God. They'd learned to keep the commandments and walk in the light. They'd learned that power comes from the scriptures and from prayer. They did indeed remember the most important lessons from Primary. 
