John Kanaka
- Stephanie Taylor
- May 19, 2017
- 1 min read
Last year, I discovered the Sea Shanty John Kanaka. What a fun call-and-response song! My students loved it. In fact, they loved it so much, after the first lesson I had planned, they would ask me things like, "Can we play John Kanaka on the recorder?" "Can we sing it again, ple-------ase!"
Eventually this first lesson turned into a four lesson unit that I have attached. It's a great cart started lesson as you have to take very little around and can modify this for several grade levels.
Summary of first lesson: (The attached document has everything in detail for you.)
We learn to sing John Kanaka together as a call-and-response piece. I teach the students a clapping game using paper plates as the first step. We then turn this into an awesome circle dance that you can play with or without a recording of the song. We trade in our paper plates for tambourines and voila! We have an energetic circle dance with instruments!
Simple assessment opportunities abound in this unit. And again, so much of the extensions on this song are created by my students themselves. They love this unit. I hope you do too!
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