The Element of Surprise or "Awww man..."
In order to shake things up a little in class and make things a bit more interesting I tried something new this past week. I had each student make up their own "step" which had to consist of 7 sounds with the counts 1 & 2 & 3 & 4. Furthermore, it had to start on the right and end on the left and be repeatable. Other than that they could do whatever they wanted with it and many did some really cool and creative things (after teaching over 20 years it's nice to see other people's creativity, especially students). I gave them some time to work on it and get it down and helped a few kids that were stuck. For those kids I simply tell them to make a sound, any sound. If they stamp their feet (for instance), then I tell them to give me a number between 1-4. If they pick 2, then I say "there's your first two sounds, stamp stamp, now make another sound and pick another number." That usually gives them a start. So once they get their "st