Staying patient and positive with younger students.

I currently teach a younger class of 8-12 year olds at a Church I am attending. We perform for the congregation about once a month, and we have class every week. They are a lively bunch (of course) and love to move around a lot during class. While singing, they often get a little too excited and tend to act out a little too much. This is very distracting for instruction, and has been a constant issue I've been running into. The previous two weeks however have been a little different. I've been working with them nonstop on new music, since they've been performing a little more regularly. Going into this process a few weeks ago, I was a little taken aback.. I didn't know how they would be able to learn 2 new pieces in 2 weeks (1 performance for each song each week). So I made it a little more graspable for them. Had them only learn 1 verse for each song, and had them use big print outs when we were going over them in class. For context, they learn through rote. What ended up happening was the complete opposite of what I was expecting. 1. They connected to the lessons I designed so much more naturally. They had a clear goal, and were able to see it through to the end. 2. They engaged with what I needed to accomplish with more enthusiasm. They participated in pointing to lyrics written on the white board, and had fun doing it. Some of them wanted to hold up the music so everyone could read. They were making the process so much easier, and then that fed back into them having more fun!

I think the take away here is that sometimes less work is better in terms of lesson planning. Without all the nitpicking I usually implement into the planning, they had room to grow in the process. That grew their interest and participation.