IN THE CLASSROOM:Exercising their vocal cords

Audrey Seidman is a big fan of recess. The music teacher, who leads classes for all grade levels at Kaiser Elementary School, encourages students to run around and stretch their limbs on the playground. It isn’t just for the sake of exercise; it also improves their pitch.

“We do all these physical stretches at the beginning of class to get the oxygen flowing,” Seidman explained during the fourth-grade class on Friday. “You’d be amazed how good a class sounds when they’ve just come in from recess.”

It’s probably natural, then, that her singing class at Kaiser plays like a workout regimen. To start off the hour, her students assume their “singing posture” — feet at shoulder length, knees bouncing, fingers touching the top of the head to bring up the rib cage. The exercises came in especially useful on Friday, since the students had to dance while they harmonized.

The song of the day was “Way Down Yonder in the Brickyard,” a traditional African-American game song, and Seidman used the dance steps to teach the class some points about phrasing. First, she organized the kids into two facing rows and told them to step back and forth and clap with each beat of the song. The number of syllables varied in each line — “Way down yonder in the brickyard/ Reme-e-e-ember me-e-e-e-e” — but the number of steps remained the same.

According to Seidman, that’s the key to musical phrasing. A phrase, like a sentence, is a complete idea, and two different sets of notes and words can fill the same amount of space. As the students sang the following lines — “Step it, step it, step it down … Swing your lady, turn her around” — Seidman had them alter their dance steps, but reminded them that each movement still followed the same rhythm.

Each grade level at Kaiser learns a different kind of music each year. Later on Friday, Seidman planned to lead the sixth-graders in drumming, while the fourth-graders said they had played recorders the year before. Friday marked the first time they had sung and danced at the same time, and Julia Carney, 9, said the choreography took some getting used to.

“It’s hard because the other people are going one way, and you have to go the opposite way,” she said.

At least one student in the class, however, didn’t mind dancing at all. “Can we actually swing a lady around?” asked Trent Hoffman, 9.

“You know, we’ll have to save that for a party,” Seidman replied. “So if you have a party in class, ask your teacher.”