Introduction

Here is the Crescendo Music Education Podcast – Episode 103.

This podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Turrbal people. I acknowledge them as the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to elder’s past, present and emerging. They were the first music makers on this land.

About ‘Read the Episode’: Sometimes, we would rather skim visually than listen to a podcast! That’s a great way to learn too!
The transcript of episode 103 of The Crescendo Music Education Podcast is below.

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Debbie O’Shea 

Welcome everyone to the Crescendo Music Education Podcast. I am so lucky because today I’m joined by Deb Brydon again, I love it when Deb and I get to talk. And when it’s on a podcast, it’s even better. Hello, Deb.

Deb Brydon 

Hi, everyone.

Debbie O’Shea 

Oh, it’s so good. It’s like we’re driving in the car, except other people can hear us as well. Yeah, I really like it. So this episode, if you haven’t caught up yet, or if you’ve come in the middle of the series, we’re going to have a chat about Year Two. Our first episode was talking about Prep and then we talked about Year One. Today we’re talking about Year Two. And just a reminder that all of the repertoire we mention will not be in the Read the Episode transcript, that’s for you to go find all of that and buy those amazing resources that it all comes from. But hopefully you’ll get lots of ideas and inspiration from this. So generally, let’s talk about what we like about or think about this level. And I’ll start Deb. For me. I think Grade Two is, I’ve only just come to this realisation as we’re taking this look at the whole year.

Thoughts on Grade Two

I’m really enjoying it thinking, Well what do I think about Grade Two? So it’s an interesting reflection for me. And I’ve decided Year Two is my games year. It’s my favourite games. They’re grown up enough that they play them well, that they can follow the rules, that they understand, generally, that you can get out in an elimination game. That it’s not the end of the world. And they can just really enjoy it. So I like it. I think of it as my games year. So some of my favourite games Bow Wow Wow, Busy Buzzy Busy Bee, Ickle Ockle, I know that’s in Year One but it’s still one of my favourites in Year Two. Lucy Locket, Button You Must Wander, which is great for dynamics, and Apple Tree. And they are capable of passing that apple on the beat. Like they’re great, they’re great so it’s games year for me, what about you Deb?

Deb Brydon 

Look Year Two is one of my favourites, they can begin to do so much. But everything’s so exciting. They love learning. Also there’s a bit of a focus for me on instruments of the orchestra, in preparation for recruiting for the strings program at the end of the year ready for Year Three, but not just focusing on strings, but the band instruments as well, because they need to know whether they want to do strings next year or hold off for a year to do band. So we’re covering all the instruments. Just wanted to give a little mention as well to our new aural skills test that Debbie and I have just developed. We’ve been using the Selmer test for years, as have many, many teachers in Queensland, as a little way to sort the sheep from the goats and have some data to decide which kids get into the program and which don’t, because sadly, we just can’t take them all.

But we were becoming less and less excited about the Selmer test. It took a long time to do and as we are now recruiting younger kids, we found that it was just a little bit intense for them. So we decided to write our own. So we started this, I don’t know must be three years ago Debbie now, and we’ve trialed it. Yes, we have trialed it for three years. And we’ve had some other people trial it as well. And this year, we’ve just got some finishing touches to do and then it’ll be ready to go. So I’m sure Debbie will talk about that in one of her Saturday Gdays when it’s ready to go and you can access it but it’s  a little bit simpler to administer, mark, less time consuming and a little bit more child friendly. So we think it’s good. Hope you do too.

Deb Brydon 

We do think it’s good, DASE. So by the way that stands for the Deb’s Aural Skills Evaluation, because we thought you know what if we’re writing it, we want our name in it, but not really.

Deb Brydon 

Just like Mr Selma did.

Debbie O’Shea 

Mr Selma, yeah.  But O’Shea Brydon or Brydon comes first because of the B, Brydon O’Shea, anyway.

Deb Brydon 

Anyway we’ve gotten very sidetracked. We’ll have to do a whole episode on that later on.

Deb Brydon 

It just doesn’t work.

Debbie O’Shea 

It’s the DASE assessment but in tiny little print it says the Deb’s Aural Skills Evaluation and we’ve done a logo. Thank you Canva. Shout out to Canva. Oh, my goodness. So Deb mainly did that logo, and we’ve been working on it. And I really do think it’s better, it’s briefer, it’s also designed for schools that actually do have specialist music teachers, because they’ve got to do some simple rhythm reading. And even when you cut the Selma down in half and only did half the number of questions in each section, it was still very long. And and I also want to point out that both Deb and I, and I think anyone who’s looking to recruit for a program, you don’t just rely on one tool. There’s lots.

Debbie O’Shea 

Okay. okay. We’ll bookmark that, we’ll come back and tell you about the DASE. But yes, Year Two, let’s go back to the thing, we do need to in our system look at instruments and I expand that obviously, instruments of the orchestra, because the Grade Twos who are very interested, they will all just grab a string instrument because they can start, they don’t want to wait a year. So those of you who don’t know our Queensland State School System, in Year Three they can start to learn a string instrument and in Year Four they can start to learn a band instrument, but our little really musical kids and the invested families, they just want to jump in. Even if they’d rather play a trumpet, they could play a violin a year earlier.

So let’s do that. So you’ve got to really cover all of those instruments, so they can decide what they would most like to play. So I think that’s really an important thing in Year Two, absolutely, doing the instruments. So I will include in the notes just a little snip of my overview of knowledge and skills over the four terms. So you can have a look at basically when I do things, Debs is similar, we do have one fairly big difference, which we will get to. So let’s start with repertoire, we’ll look at what we like to do just generally for singing. So would you like to start with your faves?

Deb & Debbie’s Year 2 Song Picks

Deb Brydon 

Sure. Yeah, I’ve got two. One is Whose That which is fantastic for a little bit of individual singing. It’s a fairly limited range song. And it’s the old voice identification, who was it that was singing, but it’s good fun, they will request that over and over again. So yes, I really like that one. And then I also like in Year Two, I love to teach them Waltzing Matilda. I think that in Australia, it’s one of Australia’s biggest songs really. But if we don’t teach it to them, no one’s going to. So I think that’s kind of cool. It does have some kind of heavy themes. But we talk around that and they get over it, they move on, and they really enjoy singing this ballad, it’s good fun.

Debbie O’Shea 

I think they quite like to do longer songs too, don’t they?

Deb Brydon 

Yes and they can read enough now to be able to read the different verses, and those who can’t just can join in with that chorus still anyway.

Debbie O’Shea 

I agree. I think that’s great. And yes I wrote down longer songs, because they just like, it’s like reading chapter books, isn’t it? It’s exciting when you can advance to those longer songs. I like Living in Australia by Ian Ross Williams. I’m sure everyone’s heard me talk about that one before. That’s great. And The Little Fish again, it’s like Waltzing Matilda, it’s longer, it’s an Australian classic. And I do think that it’s almost our responsibility as music teachers to try to cover some of this repertoire that’s not likely to be sung at home, that they really I guess “should” know, but I love The Little Fish, the Australian folk song. But we must also keep doing those songs like you mentioned, Whose That we’ve got to keep that individual singing happening, not just the whole group singing which they really are starting to get into.

Now the other thing we do in Year Two is we do rest revision or sometimes teach depending if you’ve done it at the end of Year One. I like 1,2,3. (sings) “1,2,3, Johnny caught a flea” lots of fun and you can do things on the rest, like we’re going to flick the flea on the rest. (sings) “1,2,3, Johnny caught a flea” flick and you can flick and the rest is nice and easy to hear. Or should I say easy to not hear. Haha.  Deb, what’s yours?

Deb Brydon 

I think mine’s Mr Sun. Super easy song of two notes for short phrases. And yeah, look it’s a bit of a nothing song. But I just do it for a short time with some little actions on the beat just my little sun, and they’re quite happy with it and it’s very clear where that rest is.

The Big Melodic Concept

Debbie O’Shea 

Yes. Love it. La is the big melodic concept we do in Year Two. Bounce High, I do love doing Bounce High. And by the time this episode is airing, we will have had the Elementary Music Mini Summit with Bryson Tarbert, which would have aired earlier this year. And I was lucky enough to be one of the presenters in there. The name of my session was Unleashing the Potential – One Song Many Ways. And the song I chose was Bounce High.

So it sounds very boring that I did like a half hour session on Bounce High. But it’s such a useful little song which is why I chose it and it’s got that (sings) so la so mi. I don’t use it as a make conscious because the la is, make conscious or present whichever way you use it. I use Snail Snail because it sets up the (sings) “so mi so mi before it goes into the la”. So it sets the so mi, but I do like Bounce High as one of my la core repertoire items.

Deb Brydon 

Yeah, and look Snail Snail would be my my key one for presenting the new concept as well. Because as you said, it’s just perfect. My other big la song is Lucy Locket. And that kind of flows into our next section talking about canon which we both teach in Year Two. And Lucy Locket is actually one of the first canons that I do, because it’s a song they’ll know really well. And it’s simple to put in canon. And yeah, so I guess that one, it works hard Lucy Locket it in Year Two for me. And while we’re talking about canons, I also do Row Row Your Boat which is a classic canon.

Canon

And I know we both use Georgia Newlin’s sequence of teaching canon which has been a life changer for me. And if you haven’t seen that, you should go and see the Kodály Queensland webinar on repeat on the Kodály Queensland website and watch Georgia Newlin teach about how she teaches canon and the steps that she goes through and it is foolproof. The kids just do it straightaway. It’s just so fabulous. Worth watching the webinar just for that.

Debbie O’Shea 

I’ll put that link in and it’s also cheap as chips. Once you’ve found those Kodály Queensland webinars on repeat, I think you could very easily get lost in there. There’s some amazing PD in there. So I’ll put in the link. I’m just writing myself a note, the specific webinar but also the general link to the webinars so people can pop in there and have a look. And in case you don’t know Deb and I are both on the Kodály Queensland committee. Deb was President for a very long time we now have Alisen. In fact you can hear from all our committee members on some previous episodes of this podcast, but Deb for however many years was President and is now Vice President and I’m a General Committee Member. So there’s lots of good stuff happening in Kodály Queensland and Australia.

And as for what I do with canon, yes I’m going with Deb, Lucy Locket and Row Row.  With Row Row Your Boat I like using my pool noodles, my half noodles. I don’t know if I mentioned that. All of those little eight beat songs that they know really well. You can sing them, sing them through twice and sing them as canon. It’s beautiful. I also like Sea Shell in canon, it is a beautiful song. Sea Shell. If you do not know that, that’s one worth finding. (sings) “Sea shell, sea shell, sing a song for me”. It’s so beautiful. The way they sing it is gorgeous. And I use it also, which I will come back to that for teaching minim. But it’s beautiful in canon. If you start the canon at one beat apart, and they’re singing that fifth. Anyway, it’s gorgeous. So I guess they’re my favouites for canon.

Tika Tika or Minim- Which comes first?

It leads us to the tika tika minim discussion. Now, certainly when I first did my Kodály study and my levels when I first went through them, I don’t even want to think about it, over 40 years ago, certainly tika tika was before minim. And then I think it was during a subsequent visiting of the levels, perhaps as a helper or even as a presenter. It was put to me, I think through Judy Johnson, that perhaps minim could go before tika tika. I thought about this. And it’s a similar time, I used to do minim say Grade Two, tika tika, Grade Three. I think it actually really doesn’t matter. That as long as you have it in there for a reason and you teach it well, I don’t think it matters.

Deb Brydon 

I agree.

Debbie O’Shea 

But I do minim first, because I think the repertoire is just a little more suitable for slightly younger, and tika tika is very quick to pick up. So anyway, I just do minim first, I do minim Grade Two, tika tika in Grade Three. But honestly, if someone told me I had to do it the other way around, I’d go, Okay. I don’t think it really matters. So, wherever you do minim, one sound that goes for two beats, I like Sea Shell and I See the Moon, they’re just very clear, the kids pick it up straightaway. And the sequence of the steps you use with finding a sound that’s longer than a beat and then we tie the two ta’s together and then it becomes a minim or a two, I call it a two not a ta-ah I found that ta often gets a lump, like I just did (ta-ah) I don’t do like the diving into the pool going ta-ah like you know what I mean?

Like the diver in mouse trap. I slide my hands as if I’m clapping but slide one side to the other side. You can see it if you’re watching. And that goes for two beats one sound nice and smooth. And I call it two but I also call it minim. And I sidetrack and I talk about palindromes because I really like palindromes and we spell it forwards and backwards and it spells the same. And I tell them my car’s name is a palindrome. Because my car is Hannah. Yeah, but it’s also an alliteration because it’s Hannah Hyundai. Because I like alliteration too. Anyway, that might that might be just a sidetrack.

Deb Brydon 

Just a slight sidetrack. Yeah, well, I actually do the opposite. So I do tika tika first. And like you, I could go either way. But this is the way I do it. And the reason that I’ve left minim where it is in Grade Three for me, is that I start teaching recorder in Grade Three, and find that’s a really good time to teach a minim, that longer note that we can sustain with an instrument, but really, it doesn’t matter. And I actually teach tika tika right towards the end of Year Two anyway. So end of Year Two, beginning of Year Three, whatever, it’s all the same.

My big tika tika song is Love Somebody. (sings) “Love somebody. Yes, I do”. And I like that because it’s only got the one tika tika in it later on. Have I got that right? (sings) “Love somebody, yes I do”. Yes. Yes, that’s right. Oh, goodness. You know when you haven’t done a song for a while? Anyway, it’s a bit of a song that you think the kids aren’t going to enjoy because it’s talking about loving somebody. But they actually really do. And I just talk about, I’ve got a secret. I’m not going to tell you who I love. But you have to think about someone you love.

It’s probably going to be someone in your family. And I take it away from the boy girl type love, boyfriends, girlfriends, because they’re eight and seven, they do not need to be talking about that sort of love. So just talk about someone, might be your good friend, it might be someone in your family. And it’s a little secret. And yeah, I like it because it isolates that tika tika. It’s very clear to hear in the song.

Debbie O’Shea 

I like the rhyme that goes Tick tock, tika tika, tock. There’s also Ding dong diggy diggy dong, which I’ve heard as a rhyme also as a song. So whichever one but either way, song, rhyme, Tick Tock, Ding Dong, whatever you do, great for tika – ta ta tika tika ta. Nice and easy. So that’s another one for tika tika. I just stuck in at the end there. So that’s sort of it for most of the concepts, the main concepts we do other bits and pieces of course, there’s lots with metre. We do two metre accent barlines.

That’s a pretty big one. So we’re not saying that’s all we teach, but they’re the main things. The other thing that I like to start in Year Two is letter names. And that’s partly because I like to start it because we’re on the staff now, with so and mi and la. So there’s actually, I think of it as two strands, for the way that I teach letter names. There’s the one that’s a sequence like we start with G and E, on the treble staff, so and mi, and we add A which is la, and then we practice the repertoire, then we move. So there’s a sequence, a teaching sequence. But I also do think it’s important that they learn the, let’s call it quick way, the old, Every Good Boy Deserves fudge, football, fruit, whatever it is, and Face in the Space, they need to know that because, one, it’s just another little tool.

Tuning Forks- Say hello to “A”!

But also, these kids, many of them are going to start instrumental next year, if not the year after. So they need the tools to very quickly do that before it becomes automatic. So I do introduce that concept. Now my guys know tuning fork A right from Prep. I introduce my tuning fork and his name is A and you have a listen, this is what his name sounds like. And I go around and we all listen. And we do tuning fork tricks where I hold my hand up and hold the tuning fork on their elbow, and they’ve got their hand on their ear, and they can hear the vibration coming through their arm. We love my tuning fork. His name is A and I show them in Grade Two where he lives on the staff in the second space. And we also learned G with the G clef, the treble clef. So I just think that’s a good place to start letter names is Year Two. So that’s probably the only big thing I would add there with Year Two. So any final thoughts on Year Two, Deb?

Deb Brydon 

No I don’t think so. Look, it’s just a lot of fun.

Debbie O’Shea 

Yeah, I love that. Year Two is a lot of fun. And I will say goodbye to the lovely Deb Brydon. And I will see you again and talk to you again Deb to do Year Three.

Deb Brydon 

Bye everyone.

Debbie O’Shea 

Bye.

Sign-Off

Thank you for joining me for this podcast. Don’t forget, you’ll find the show notes and transcript and all sorts of information on crescendo.com.au. If you’ve enjoyed the podcast or found it valuable, you might like to rate it on your podcast player and leave a review. I’d really appreciate it if you did. All I can be as the best version of me. All you can do is be the best you. Until next time, bye.

Just for Laughs

As we know, laughter relieves stress, don’t lose sight of the funny side of life.
The psychic convention was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

🎙️ Episode 103: Year Level Snapshots: A Birds-Eye View of Year 2 with Deb and Debbie

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