OBJECTIVE: To review the song, Hava Nagila, and to teach the students a traditional Hebrew dance that they can perform with the song while they sing it.

SKILLS: The students must have full functional use of their bodies and be able to sing on key while moving.

CONCEPTS: Students must be able to clap the beat, and melodic rhythm, sing on key, and have a willingness to learn to move in a fun way in order to enhance their enjoyment of the music that they hear.

LEVEL OF PREPAREDNESS: Students are in a sixth grade class and have already learned to sing and clap the melodic rhythm in "Hava Nagila".

MATERIALS: (1) "Hava Nagila". The Melody Book. Silver,Burdett and Ginn. 1994.

(2) Audio Cassette recording of "Hava Nagila", performed by Maurice Sklar from the album "Songs of Zion".

MOTIVATING QUESTIONS AND REVIEW:

T: (enthusiastically) Good morning, class! I’m sure that you remember singing "Hava Nagila" and clapping its rhythm last class. You learned the song very quickly and sang it so well. How many of you remember that song?

(S raise hand)

T: Great! I’m glad to see that you remember it. Let’s listen to the song while we stand up and stretch to get our bodies ready for today’s lesson.

(T plays HN from audio cassette while students stand and stretch along with the teacher’s example.)

T: Great! Now our bodies are ready to go. Let’s move the desks and stand in a circle here in the front of the room.

(S do as instructed)

T: Let’s sing this song again to get back into the spirit of the music. (T leads the singing of HN with the tape.)

T: That was magnificent! Now, class, who can remember the type of music has a lot of rhythm that describes this song.
(S answer question. T prompts answer if needed.)

T: That’s right, "Hava Nagila" is a dance. We’re going to learn how to do a dance now that goes along with this music. The dance that we will do is a traditional Hebrew dance that has been done by Jewish people for ages.

NEW MATERIAL:

T: This dance repeats itself, similar to the way that line dances repeat themselves. There are six steps in this dance. Let me show you each one, one by one, and then you can imitate me. Each time we learn a new step, we will then put that step together with the ones previously learned and practice all of the dance that we know so far until we have learned the entire dance.

(S do as T describes, led by T.)

T: You are learning so quickly! Since we have learned the dance, now we will join hands and perform this dance slowly in a circle in the manner that it is usually performed. This will let us get used to the dance before we begin to dance to the music.

(S do as T instructs)

T: Great job! Let’s add some music. (T plays the music and leads the students in dancing to HN.) And finally, let’s see who can sing along while they do the dance! (S and T dance again in a circle while singing as much of HN as possible.)

T: Wow! I am so impressed with all of you! You picked right up on this dance. We will dance more next class, and then learn a recorder part that goes with "Hava Nagila." I can’t wait to see it all put together! Thank you all and have a great day in your other classes!