Checklist!!! With 2 lessons left before our concert - today we worked on our performance prep to make sure we feel more ready to go every week! Today we started our checklist! With each song that we will be performing, we have specific things we need to remember. Today's objective was to get through as many songs as we could - 1 song at a time, checking off our placement, performance, microphone technique, stage presence, intros, and exits.
Because I won't be reminding the students what to do, correct, and adjust in real time - we mapped out our checklist for each song BEFORE we sang each song - and then I sat down and didn't say anything while they were performing the songs. We would then evaluate at the end - say which boxes we could check off. If they checked off every single box - we would move on to the next song. If they missed a few boxes, we would circle them, and perform the song again - as many times as it took to pass off all of the boxes and feel 100% ready to go on that particular song! For each area (performance, placement, microphone technique, smiling, walking on and off), we would map out "what would be a win" with each song - or what would need to happen in every area for us to feel like we did the very best possible. In order to check the box off, we had to do all of the things in each category we had decided on before hand. Our checklists looked like this: Kiss the girl Performance: Constant arm movement, big gestures. Smile!! Character! Act it out! Placement: Musical Theater!! (talked out, short words, squeaky placement) Smile! Microphone technique: Aiming the directional microphone at our mouth and following our mouth with the mic, making sure the audience can hear us the whole time.
Smiling!! Walk on: Walk on and set in our confident performance stance - with our feet shoulder width apart, feet facing forward, and stretching really tall with our posture. When will my life begin: Performance: Constant arm movement, rotating through our mic technique arms - big gestures. Placement: Musical theater character (talked out, words more connected, squeaky placement) Smile! Microphone technique: Aiming the directional microphone at our mouth and following our mouth with the mic, making sure the audience can hear us the whole time.
Smiling!! Walk on: Walk on and set in our confident performance stance - with our feet shoulder width apart, feet facing forward, and stretching really tall with our posture. Hannah did SO AWESOME!!!! We checked off both of these songs today!! From now until our performance, we will use our checklist every lesson - talking about each song less and less so that Hannah can get more and more independent and feel like she is ready to go even when there are a million other performers and i'm not back stage with her! She is ROCKING!!!!! I'm so proud of her!!