I am very blessed to have a teacher assistant, Monsieur Abdou. Most elementary music teachers do not have assistants and our school's teacher to student ratio is not the norm in public schools. Usually he helps me out for 5 of my 8 classes. On Thursday, Abdou's host family took him on an all day cycling trip. He really deserved the day off but needless to say, being alone with 20+ children ages 5-9 holding tambourines and maracas is tough. I am still learning a lot about elementary classroom management. That is a long way to say, I spend a lot of time trying to keep the children in control and on task. Having another adult in the classroom to manage the hyper children (or the ones having melt downs) is priceless.
By the grace of God, it was a successful instruction day. I wanted to let the students play percussion instruments to a song they knew really well. So I passed out maracas and tambourines for "Les cro-cro" It is an upbeat 2/4 song about crocodiles. I let them dance (on the red lines without jumping on the flip forms of course) and they did a great job of playing their instruments and staying on the beat. I could tell they were all trying hard and having fun too! This is one of the reasons why I do what I do.
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