Boyd Holmes, the Writer

Stacking Skills for Success: Marching – Part One

9/30/2022

Parades!

Marching!

Clicking sticks and singing while you marched!

Beginning band instruments marching down a school hallway playing their first melodies for enthralled younger students!

Let's face it.

Kids love to make music while they march.

I would always promise my children in kindergarten and first grade that we would be doing a parade with sticks, a drum, and an American flag.

Second grade and third graders would see them and beg to march like they did in previous years.

Fourth graders wanted an official marching band with their brand new shinny instruments.

There were illustrative descriptions of how we were going to line up one behind the other and march “left, right, left, right” through our school, performing for our cafeteria workers, custodians, secretaries, and everybody who can take a second to stop and listen to their music.

Sometimes, it felt like I was channeling Harold Hill, except that I actually knew how to teach music.

When I told the class that it was time for the parade, they were beyond giddy with excitement.

As I started lining up them up, they said, “Where are we going today? Where are we going to march? Who are we going to visit? Where are our sticks?”, to which I responded “What? You thought I was going to give you all that stuff and take you through the school before I could see if you could march “left, right, left, right” in a straight line? Oh no, my little friends, we've got some practice to do – right here in this classroom - before I hand out musical instruments and flags.”

And practice we did.

They clapped their hand – no sticks until they could consistently show me a steady beat.

No flag. We used a rubber chicken at the front of the line. “If I am going to be playing guitar and leading this parade, I don’t want to get poked by an American flag. At least if you bump into me with the chicken, it won’t hurt!”

As most of you who know me already know, there's always a learning curve to every activity I did it in class.

It was “let's learn it, practice it, and then deliver it”.

Eventually, they earned and got those sticks, flags, drums and delivered beautiful music up and down the school hallways, singing and playing their folk songs.

Caution: never do a hallway parade during state testing week.

When staff and kids would stop and listen to our marchers sing a song as they as they went “left, right, left, right”, they would often remark to me later how smoothly the whole activity went.

Of course, if you've been reading these posts about stacking skills for success, you already know the secret.

I have been teaching and reinforcing self-discipline, proactivity, and listening skills from week one, day one, class one, minute one.

Teachers who feel like those first three skills can wait because they aren’t as important as getting kids up and running and making music, usually have parades that look more like a crash and burn situation then an orderly parade.

As usual, it's the prep work that makes the activity prosper.

It's what you taught before what you taught that matters.

Marching has a way of reinforcing the idea of making music to a steady beat, first in your feet, then with your hands. It also forces the issue of musically multi-tasking for little kids.
A parade also had a hidden positive effect on a school.

When older kids see the younger students working hard to pull off a parade with instruments and songs, they wistfully think back on how far they themselves have come.

That kind of positive energy can’t be bought – it can only be generated.

And parades work every time!

Check out “Stacking Skills for Success: Marching – Part Two” for a different spin on marching and parades.

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What you taught

9/29/2022

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Stacking Skills for Success: Clapping

9/29/2022

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We take so much for granted.

Like clapping.

We have kids clapping during songs, we have kids clapping on the beat as well as off the beats, we have kids giving other kids rounds of applause fortheir achievements in music class.

But not all children walk through the door the first day of school knowing how to clap their hands.

Not all kids walk through the door.

There are children who live incredible lives but struggle to do so.

Lucky for me, I had the opportunity to work with many of these children, take stock an inventory of the blessings I have in my life, learn more about the body’s inner workings, and help these students enjoy and engage in music, including the sound of their own clapping hands.

For sixteen years, I taught at the John G. Leach School, a school for kids with severe cognitive and Orthopedic disabilities in New Castle, Delaware, with students ranging in age from 3 to 21.

For many of these children, it was impossible to spontaneously clap their hands.

Clapping your hands involves a highly delineated set of skills, with one of them being understanding the midline.

What is the midline?

The midline is the imaginary vertical line that runs from top to bottom in the middle of your body.

It's where your hands come together to clap.

Not all kids can conceptualize the midline.

The midline is crucial for understanding how to coordinate the left and right sides of our bodies. Bringing a spoon to your mouth, tying your shoes, brushing your teeth – all of these occur at the convenience of your subliminal understanding of the midline.

It is a skill that can be learned, often with significant repetition and the help of therapists as well as real world applications.

Clapping while counting or singing were some of the first musical expressions that kids participated in my music class.

As always, these initial activities are gorilla assessments to quickly evaluate the baseline body awareness that kids have developed and move forward from place.

Plus, there was no way I was going to arm a room of kids with loaded rhythm sticks before I assessed how they clapped their hands.

Everything I put in the hands of children was dependent on an developmental antecedent.

(And please don’t be that adult who claps a call and answer rhythm to gety kids to be quiet. Remember, kids see much more than they hear: train children that when you raise your hand, you expect them to be quiet and attentive.)

I will go over some of the techniques I developed in music class to help kids find the midline and clap their hands in another post but for now, just know that what you and I effortlessly do, especially with musical instruments, can be a struggle for others.

As teachers, our commitment is to accept children at their present skill level and hopefully guide them to the next level.
Sometime during your teaching career, you may encounter students who are struggling with clapping.

When you do, first count your blessings, and second, start strategizing with an occupational therapist about clapping and coming to the midline.

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Stacking Skills for Success: Counting

9/27/2022

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The youngest children were quick to understand that I considered counting an integral skill to possess in music.

For me, it was a key stacking skill for success in music.

Mind you, I usually taught children starting at age five so many of them could count to ten if not a bit higher.

They were very proud when they could count to the number that I requested and stop.

Of course, I was waving my hands and jumping up and down when they got to that number, smiling from ear to ear and so proud of their counting success.

That was quickly followed by tabula rasa expression with no indication of how I felt. It was was with that ennui-induced face that would then issue another number that was a little bit higher.

The children learned to understand that those numbers would determine how many notes we played, how many sticks we held, how many steps we marched, how many days we were going to have music that week, and how many pluses or minuses they received on the chalkboard. “Ten” was a crucial number: they wanted to make sure their behavior stayed at ten and didn’t drift down to a nine or an eight.

After all, just as it is much easier to fall down a mountain than climb it, it was easier to let things slip down a few digits and more laborious to climb their way back to a “ten”.

The other indispensable element about counting is that it can mark the passage of time.

It takes a child so many seconds to count from one to ten and a few more to count from one to twenty.

As I would have them count to those numbers, I would draw an invisible rainbow with my pointer finger in the air, starting with the first number at one end of the rainbow and the last number on the other.

As we counted to larger numbers, it took longer for my finger to draw the rainbow. This is it key component to performing music, understanding the path of time.

I would often have them replicate my “rainbow move” when they were singing long notes in songs. I was a way for them to project the note to its required duration.

With time (no pun intended), kids learned that counting was a way of measuring elements of the music they made.

Over time (NOT A PUN!), the counting fades and their internal clock takes over. Even the youngest children found they could hear four or eight beats more easily than if they counted them.

James Taylor wrote, “The secret ‘o life is enjoying the passage of time” and making music bore witness to that lyric every time we made music in our music room.

Many a time at the forty-minute mark when I said, “Okay, time to clean up, it’s time to go”, the kids roared in dismay with “But we just got here!”

They learn that the cliché “time flies when you’re having fun” didn’t even begin to describe the joy they had in music or the speed of time.

Time didn’t fly in our music classes and chorus rehearsals: it evaporated!

Once you can adorn the passage of time with a beautiful sound, you know you have created music.

I think Leonard Bernstein’s, Betty Comden’s, and Adolph Green’s song from “Our Town” sums it up best.

Here is Blossom Dearie singing “Some Other Time”.

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Four Things

9/27/2022

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What Count and What Doesn't

9/26/2022

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Stacking Skills for Success: Singing – Part Four

9/25/2022

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Clearly, there is much more to singing than my five attributes of “big singing”:

No hands on face.
No screaming.
Open your mouth.
Move your lips.
Move your tongue.

But these five points were my starting place and I could use them with kids from kindergarten to fifth grade knowing that they understood what those five components were and how they affected the improvement of their sound when they sang.

Vowel sounds were something that I strongly considered putting in the big singing list but didn't, primarily because it wasn't connected to their anatomy like hand, face, mouth, tongue, and lips.

Another reason was that getting vowel sounds was often a question of students not aurally modeling me close enough, not listening to my sound, not differentiating between my vowels and theirs.

Many a time I yelled at my chorus, “Ugh!! When you sing the word ‘go’, you sound like you're all from New Castle, Delaware.”

“But, Mr. Holmes, we are from New Castle, Delaware!”

“Ahhh, but you have to sound as if you are from everywhere and nowhere all at once. I shouldn't be able to listen to you and tell by your accent where you're from. There should be no discernable accent in your singing!”

One last word about the importance of modeling and singing.

Occasionally when I saw a class that was not following the five elements of big singing, I would say, “I'm going to show you a video of a group of young singers. I want you to tell me how good you think they sound.”

I would then show a video of PS 22 from New York City singing one of their songs, usually the Journey’s, “Don’t Stop Believing”.

I would have the volume all the way off.

As the silent video started to play, kids would say, “But, Mr. Holmes, we can't hear them.”

My response was, “I told you I was going to show you a video, not let you hear a video. As you watch how they're singing, can you tell if they sound good or not? And what are you making your prediction on? Are you considering the five steps of big singing? Do you see any of them doing any of those five things as they sing?”

Silence ensued as the kids thought.

After a few seconds, the kids spontaneously called out the good singing traits they saw.

After I had enough evidence that the class was seeing a difference in singing styles and technique without relying on sound, I replayed the video with the sound up and asked the kids if their predictions were accurate. Inevitably, that little activity was a huge validation to their efforts to improve their singing technique.

After all, modeling from the teacher can only go so far, it can only have so much of an effect.

Kids learn best from other kids.

By having my classes and choruses watching singers their own age, evaluating how the kids in the video controlled their bodies as they sang, and appreciating how good kids in the video sounded, my students received a shot of adrenaline to their vocal technique.

Before attending chorus festivals, I told my singers to make mental notes of what they observed when the other school choruses sang – what did they like, what didn’t they like, and what would they do differently.

Afterwards, I was always amazed at the details they remembered from the performances (some kids actually made written notes!) and how they had learned that not paying attention to small vocal and performance details could undermine the overall effect of a piece.

Once again, it's not what teachers say but rather what we visually introduce and provide to students as a model that makes the biggest difference, especially in singing.

Wrap-up
Singing is an elemental sound.

It captures all human emotions and is a dependable way for kids to release their feelings.

The sound of the voice is our aural fingerprint, a gift from our parents that has been genetically shaped over centuries just for us.

It is something to treasure and to teach younger generations that their voices are as individualist as they are.

While some classically trained singer strive for the perfection of the composers who wrote the material they sing, the rest of us sing because of what it adds to our life.

As teachers, we’re not concerned with perfection: it’s about participation.

As teachers, we have to not just model the techniques used in singing – we need to exhibit the results of singing.

As I’ve alluded to in other posts, I am not a “gusher’ or a teacher who is perpetually smiling at my class. I’m not frowning but rather trying to project a tabula rasa.

When children sang from an uninhibited place, I always broke out a broad grin. They learned that the easiest way to prompt Mr. Holmes’ approving smile was to be musical, to lose themselves in the sound for a few seconds or minutes.

In short, to take an unprompted artistic chance.

As I often reminded my students, “Singing doesn’t count unless the sound travels through your heart”.

Developing confident, competent singers from the younget ages creates a foundation for all future musical skill stacking.

When kids realize that singing isn’t just a “gimmie” but rather a skill that can be developed and demonstrably improved, something that can shape the emotions and lives of their listeners as well as themselves, the stage is set for the successful introduction and integration of all future music skills.

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Stacking Skills for Success: Singing – Part Three

9/22/2022

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Have you ever watched a music teacher coaxing a class to sing a little bit louder?

Maybe it even happened to you.

Each time they try, the teacher stops them, extolling them to sing louder and each time, they are not loud enough for the teacher’s tastes.

After a few demoralizing attempts, inevitably, some kid or kids start to scream, as in, “Oh you want me to sing louder? I'll sing louder for you. I'll scream!”

I learned that what I really wanted kids to do was to sing “big”.

What is “big singing”?

Big singing is using all of our knowledge of five special precepts as well as all of our body to vocalize a melody and impart a musical emotion.

One of the skills that clever teachers master is learning what to say to kids, what not to say to kids, and what to SHOW kids.

And of course, given the first three stacking elements for success, mainly self-discipline, proactivity, and listening, the goal is for the kids to learn how to proactively sing in a big way, not to learn how to be dependent upon me to coach them to sing correctly everyday for the rest of their lives.

After a great deal of experimentation, data collection, editing, and review, I whittled down the most important aspects I wanted kids to carry with them concerning singing.

These five components were the foundation of big singing.

They are:

No hands on face.
No screaming.
Open your mouth.
Move your lips.
Move your tongue.

I determined that everything else I wanted them to know, they would pick up from my modeling.

I didn't get into a lot of descriptive anatomy or talk about diaphragms and lungs and supporting their breath because frankly, that's too abstract for many of the younger children.

I wanted to deal with very simple words.

The five steps of big singing add up to 15 words in all.

All of those words are single syllable words except for one.

Some kids will intrinsically feel that singing big means to sing loud.

It doesn't.

It simply means to do the five steps of big singing.

If those steps are followed, the sound quality will probably be pretty good and just loud enough.

I would say, “If you do these five things, you will sound as good as me - I promise! ”

The beauty of big singing is that the words involved in the five steps have nothing to do with volume.

They're all about physical attributes and technique. Big singing works at pp or FF.

When I led children song, I used my eyes and body language to communicate louder or softer. No matter what I was communicating, they had to continue to sing big.

Let me go through each of the five steps of big singing.

No hands on face.
I noticed that many kids tend not to know where to put their hands when they sing.

If they're at a desk a chair, or even sitting on the floor with crisscross legs, they'll often prop their hand up and support their head. Ninety percent of the school day that's no problem.

But when you're singing, your hands cannot be touching your face.

I would often demonstrate the problem of hands on face by strumming a guitar for a few seconds and having a student place both hands on the face of the guitar while I continued strummed. They immediately observed how touching the guitar absorbs vibrations and deadens the sound.

“We don't want our hands on our face because it will literally diminish the sound coming out of our mouths.”

The reason I didn't say exactly where to put their hands while they sing was because there are a multitude of different jobs the hands can do and different places they can be while they sing. I basically wanted to let them know where I really never wanted to see their hands while they sang, namely on their face.

No screaming.
When your music teaching gets kids so positively stirred up and happy when they sing, it can turn into a “scream-along” rather than a “sing-along”.

It's hard to diminish their enthusiasm but it's crucial that they understand that singing is not screaming.

You can program a scream at the end of a song or in the middle of the song for an effect, much like Hayden did in the Surprise Symphony, but screaming does not lead to good choral sound.

Open your mouth.
It seems like an obvious one but kids don't spend a lot of time visualizing what their mouth looks like when they're singing.

“Open mouth” is actually more easily communicated through teacher modeling. If the kids see me singing with my mouth open, they'll know that is the expectation.

I know some educators employing different ways to measure the aperture of the mouth and relay that to their students but I simply relied on the visual prompt rather than some tortured verbal explanation.

Move your lips.
Again, this is a verbal prompt that is reinforced by my modeling when I sing.

The mouth is where the sound comes out and we need everything moving together to get the sound to come out properly. If we don't move our lips we tend to mumble and mumbling never works in music.

Move your tongue.
When I was singing and modeling to my classes, I would occasionally ask, “Can you see my tongue moving when I sing?”

The common answer was sometimes.

“I know you can see my tongue moving sometimes but just know that when I'm singing, unless I'm singing a long sustained sound, my tongue is always working as hard as my lips to make the words sound as clear as possible.”

I’ll wrap up big singing in “Stacking Skills for Success: Singing – Part Four”.

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