After my first online Suzuki Violin group class this week, I wrote a report to the parents about our class activities. I hope these ideas generate more conversations among online Suzuki teachers about fun, thoughtful, and successful group class goals while we weather the pestilence and social distancing.
Here is my letter to the parents.
Hello Group class Families,
I wrote a report about our class to the Suzuki office, since we're still inventing this new reality, and I thought I'd share it with you parents, especially if you weren't around during your child's group class time, or if your child wasn't able to attend and you want to know how it went.
Book 4-5 group class, ages 9/10-14/15? It really was fun to see everyone including our accompanist at the piano, sitting in their own digital spaces. No one abused the platform capabilities, like changing the background, although there was quite a bit of chatter in the chat box that I couldn't keep up with at every moment. I told them to be nice, but didn't otherwise spend time doing discipline. I don't think I really need to discipline this level group about social etiquette, but if you can praise them for giving good comments to each other, etc, that would be a good reminder that manners and positive attitudes do matter, even in the virtual world. What was really cool was seeing the usually quiet students own their own space, some of them being a little more brave about conversation whether spoken or typed. Twelve of the fourteen students were able to attend. It was a lovely group and I think they were mostly glad to see one another. I guess that some of the students may be having online classes for their schoolwork too, and may be developing expectations of normalcy about this system. Activities we did: 1) Panda bow exercises from Cathy Lee's book (Thank you Mrs. Cathy Lee!) I demonstrated and the students copied back. The pianist accompanied us with fun ditties that she thought would complement our motions- stuff like the theme from Jeopardy for instance. :) 2) Tonalization: Chorus- both as our usual warm-up, and to try out group playing over the app. We had the accompanist on sound, everyone else on mute. You can't try to watch each other's bows- for instance, I had one student lead, but her cue was of course not at the true time by the time it reached us all. Next time I'll have the accompanist cue. It was fine if we just played along with the piano without relying on visual communication with each other. 3) Expressions game (Main activity): each play an excerpt from a piece with a certain mood or expressive style. We talked about how bow length and articulation, dynamics, and tempo could all lead to expressive playing. We chimed in with our feedback about what mood we thought the performer intended. There was a little discussion each time via both chat window and voice, and then the performer confirmed what was the true intended expression. We had a range of book 1-5 pieces, usually the beginning phrase only, and melancholy/depressed to frantic/rushed to happy/excited were the most common expressions demonstrated. A few volunteers kicked it off, but after that I had to go alphabetically through the class list to get students to contribute. All but 3 of the 12 took a turn. The most reluctant ones will probably need more time to get used to sharing this way before I urge them more strongly to participate. N. B.: I would choose next time to have each student rename his or her window with their own names, rather than the parent's name on the account. I think that is possible. I almost called a few students by their parents' names just because they were labeled that way! 4) I asked the students to come up with their own ideas of a game or activity for this new setting, and either email me ahead of time or be prepared to describe the activity at the next class. I already heard some suggestions: name that tune, Suzuki or otherwise; A game where one person starts a piece then stops randomly and calls out a name for someone else to pick it up there- all stay unmuted but wait quietly, as if in the classroom. I'm lloking forward to trying this one next week. 5) Last, we did ear-training in the form of my teaching them a Scottish fiddle tune (Tam Lin) one small phrase at a time. They were all muted, but as I looked around I could see them all getting results of varying success. I would be happy for any one of them to bring in a simple piece to do that with, such as another fiddle tune, baby shark, etc. It was a nice dessert for the class. Thank you for your continuing enthusiasm for your children's musical experience. Bekka
At this point, I'm just hoping we all get used to the online platform, given that we have a few weeks already planned for this mode of instruction, as well as some online performance-shares in the planning stages. I can see that the students are mostly comfortable with using the computer for their lessons, enjoy seeing each other, and can quickly get used to the timing of the online group experience (considering the delay between multiple players which we don't have the tech to overcome yet) Soon though, I really need us to be doing more than a "Play-in", so I'm still brainstorming about more pedagogical activities to try.
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