chant off and lessons for the teacher

We have embarked on the Chant Off competition preparation with the year 8 music classes.

I'm exhausted from writing that sentence so I have no idea how I am going to cope with the next 3 weeks of silly preparation. I teach 4 year 8 classes. Their groups of islands are Micronesian islands, Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean and Pacific ocean. None of the groupings really resemble what islands are found there......some rogue islands have found their way from the Pacific to Micronesia, and there is a beautiful Caribbean issue of having a Pacific island or two........

So the fun begins with the kidlets. We have, in our family groups - which is a fancy way of stating learning groups but with an individual island name - written our chants. Each family group have had to write 2 verses with 4 lines per verse. Each line has to have 4 beats - all up 16 beats.......I realised that I am teaching numeracy as well as literacy in my subject.

Having the perverse sense of humour that I have, I encouraged the kidlets to write slightly off-beat rhymes. My Atlantic Ocean group were really struggling with rhyming so I suggested to think laterally about Portuguese influences (a few of the islands have Portuguese as their main language) and we came up with Nandos. I'm not sure what the rules are for product placement in school tasks but the kids were outdoing each other with their references to chicken, Nandos and peri-peri sauce. In amongst all of this are a few lovely lines - but as Scott is one of the judges I wont mention it here.

So imagine 25 x 14 years, mostly male, with bored looks on their faces attempting flamenco dancing (Spanish influence......) with badly played Spanish guitar and chanting about Chicken. I think you are getting some idea of the EXCITEMENT I am dealing with here. The Atlantic Ocean group have some of the most bored girls I have EVER encountered. They are ofay with the eye-roll, find music (or anything really) a drag and have no problems in combining these two ideas much to my disdain. There am I doing the best dag impersonation I can muster and the girls look to each other, roll their eyes and turn to have another conversation about their social lives.

I wonder why I love teaching teenagers.

That was last Friday.

Today I discovered the joys of boys with rolled up newspapers. I knew but am not 100% fit at the moment and didn't quite think through the idea of 20 boys holding rolled up newspapers....

Now the question I can hear being asked is why would you want to have 20 boys holding rolled up newspapers? To learn how to do a stick dance of course. It makes total sense to me. The kids saw the video of it and jumped on board. They also reminded me of why you don't give boys these 'toys' and then ask them to hold them waist height. Nor do you ask them to sit down - in which case they lie down and proudly show off their extensions..........

It was a very trying 20 minutes of practice. Their 6th period teacher came and complained to me for having the kids fired up..........

I might just say these are my worst two classes - my favourites are on Thursday and they are firing with ideas.....