Julianne Michalik

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Student Teaching-Week 1

September 14, 2014

 

             I have been very lucky in my student teaching experience thus far.  My placement is fabulous, from my co-op to the students that I am privileged to teach.  I am very comfortable in my student teaching placement due to two factors: I had my same placement for elementary praxis, and my co-op is extremely open to sharing her experiences and lessons with me. 

            Teaching in itself has been so much fun!  My co-op has been kind and tactful enough to allow me to observe most of the first cycle of her classes for which I was present, and pick and choose a few things from each class’s lesson which I am comfortable teaching.  I have taught at least one thing in every grade level except kindergarten.  The elementary is K through 5.  I really like seeing the same lesson taught multiple times, and I am able to do so since the school is on a 5-day cycle rotation for specials classes. 

So far, there have been 2 big challenges for me. One has been learning names.  There are almost six hundred children in this elementary school, and I am just starting to learn the names of the teachers and their classes for certain grade levels.  The other challenge is something that I have always struggled with in my teaching, and that is how to speak to certain age groups.  Sometimes I still feel myself trying to remember what interests first graders, or kindergarteners, or third graders.  I know their ages, but I sometimes can’t seem to find the right way to say something when presenting a new concept or giving a direction.  This happens more often when I teach classes back to back, and I start to get lost in lessons and I what I did yesterday or the week before, etc.  I certainly use my lesson plans, but the ways in which certain new concepts are presented to kindergarteners or fifth graders are obviously light years away from each other. 

Something that I find actually fun is in-class assessment.  Formal is great, but the informal assessment is the best.  I love being able to ask students what something in music means, and they can answer!  When kids can tell me what a rest is, or how many beats equal a quarter note, or can decode a melody with solfege, that’s when I’m truly amazed and inspired and want to teach even more.  Some assessments that I have learned from my co-op are audiation with Curwen hand signs, solfege or melody puzzles, and singing games that transfer into teaching tools for later lesson on solfege or rhythm.  I am also a big questioner.  For example, I asked students if I should “play with my mallets up here?” while my mallets are above my head.  Stating the obvious for students to correct is fun for both the teacher and student.  You get to be silly, and they get a laugh!

So far, I have observed many classes with special needs students in them, but I have not made any specific adjustments to lessons for those students.  My placement school is an inclusion classroom school, as of the past few years or so.  I have watched my co-op handle some interesting and difficult situations very well.  I now know that certain inclusion students can absolutely handle being in a classroom with general education students, and in many cases I have watched the general education students making a very positive impact on the special needs students.  For example, one little girl in a first grade class was seated in her circle spot next to an inclusion student, and she was constantly redirecting his attention to the teacher or the task at hand without being asked.  I learned later that this task was never assigned to her, but she took the initiative and helped someone who was just another classmate.  This was obviously a great experience for the little girl and the special needs student, and my co-op did not even need to alter or adjust her lesson due to the natural learning environment created by inclusion.  In most cases of special needs students, yes, the teacher should do their best to adjust to the student.  In any case of a student, special needs or general education, I firmly believe that adjustment is a teacher’s greatest role in that student’s education.  However, the adjustment that the teacher may have to make is so dependent on so many factors, more so than just the student’s level of abilities. There are always good and bad days with any class or student. 

            As of right now, I think my greatest strengths as a teacher are sequence and adjustment.  I usually feel that my sequences are very logical, and I never have trouble remembering my lesson sequence because of that factor.  My sequence makes sense to me because I can never transition to one step without doing the previous.  I also feel that I adjust well to time changes.  If for some reason certain steps take more time than others, I am easily able to adjust my sequencing and ending my lesson. 

I taught my first full class this past Thursday, and I was very happy with the students and how I felt about my teaching.  I taught third grade, and we focused on improvising and sol-mi recognition.  My co-op gave extremely helpful feedback, mostly just adding and subtracting certain steps in my lesson to allow time for one activity that I was not able to finish.  My co-op seemed to like my overall teaching and sequence, but helped me add some steps that will make certain transitions from one step to another a little smoother.  I really enjoy teaching third graders.  They have an interesting mindset in that they still like to do the fun games that they did when they were younger, yet they can also progress to more advanced concepts and topics within the same class.  Even though my co-op had already taught the students the sing-and-play game from before, I loved hearing that they still remembered it and could sing it on their own.  My co-op has really taught her students wonderful singing skills, with proper musicianship to go alongside. 

             

 

 

Student Teaching-Week 2 

September 21, 2014

 

            In this past week, I have definitely noticed the amount of modification in both my lessons and my co-op’s lessons.  So many factors come in to play when students take you in a different direction than your original plan, and I feel that being able to modify is an essential skill of being a teacher. 

            In my first full lesson, I taught third grade.  In my lesson I had a high concentration on improvisation.  In my lower concentration portion, I taught a sing-and-play song.  I started off by reviewing the poem “2, 4, 6, 8”.  In some classes, they had already learned this poem and I only needed to review it.  In other classes, I needed to teach the rhyme because my co-op did not have time in her last classes with certain groups.  I was easily able to do a call-and-response teaching sequence with the students, but this was definitely a modification to my lesson.  I had not planned to teach them the rhyme, but I needed to be able to quickly teach a rhyme that was needed for their improvisation activity. 

            I had to also modify my sequencing in almost every lesson.  I feel as though when I’m first teaching in my own classroom, this is going to happen constantly.  In my sequencing of the improvisation section, I began with reviewing instrument care and proper use.  Sometimes I tend to naturally change my sequencing of things just because of how the class answers questions or questions me.  For instance, a student answered that going from low to high meant playing the short to the long bars.  This led me to give an example of a high and low sound while students watched me play the bars.  This helped them figure out which was which, but it was different than what I originally planned.  I may have even skipped the instrument playing position section of my review, but it was a necessary adjustment so that the students would know exactly what was low and what was high. 

            Another big modification that I came across in this lesson was the actual improvisation process.  This part was more interesting to me in that each modification that I made depended very much on the learners in the class, and what the class seemed to be able to do as an end goal.  In my observation, I felt that this class was having more trouble understanding playing up and down within a phrase.  In a later lesson, I did end up changing my process to doing a random improvisation to at least accustom the class to playing the instruments more fluently, even if some still didn’t seem to quite grasp playing phrases up and down.  However, I would say that about half of this later class seemed to be able to play at least three of the four phrases in the right directions. 

            I find it so interesting that some classes have an overall learning type.  For instance, some classes are fabulous at keeping a steady beat with their instruments or while singing a song, but others seemed to be perfectionists and would try so hard just to play up or down one way.  Other simple modifications that I encountered for problems such as these were simply slowing down the beat, making sure that students ALWAYS say the poem or song, and giving students a few seconds to work their patterns out. 

            Another mistake that I sometimes make is assuming I know exactly how I am going to deal with certain problems.  I find that I really need to think through the lesson and try to imagine the lesson in real-life context.  When I do this, it helps me imagine problems that might come up, whether it is a student asking a question that I might not have expected to have been asked, or just not taking questions or calling out at all.  Sometimes students raise hands and want to ask a relevant question, tell you a relevant connection that they have made, or just want to tell you “something”.  I’m still learning when it’s relevant and okay to address, when it’s just “something” and can wait until later.  Another issue that I will sometimes freeze with is dealing with talking.  I usually have a good solution, but I am also very careful to observe my co-op’s rules and regulations in her room.  I never want to overstep my boundaries, but I also want to be able to develop my demeanor and expectations as a teacher.  I probably allow a little too much chatter, but I also have a different level of patience for certain things that others may not.  I’m still finding that happy medium between what I allow and when I draw the line. 

            Another aspect of teaching that I have found to be extremely important is assessment.  I have really tried to make assessment a natural part of my teaching, especially since my co-op seems to do it so flawlessly and often.  I feel that assessment is simply a way of life for a good teacher, and to make it as easy as possible is extremely important.  The more I teach, the more I realize that I cannot modify anything without constant assessment of what my students are aware of and what they need to improve upon.  I find that something as simple as asking review questions on instrument care and “which notes go up and down” are actually assessing a student’s memory of the lesson or even of the rules established from year before.  I think assessment can also be qualified as something visual.  If I notice a student is playing in the wrong direction on an instrument, that’s an immediate indicator that either they did not process something or I did not teach something thoroughly.  If I do not address this, then I’m not assessing my class and students properly.  Some other assessments that I’ve come across that work extremely well are letting students sing a song without me to see if they can sing on their own, asking identification questions for patterns in songs or visual patterns for rhythms, and having students end the phrases of a song to see if they are paying attention to the words.  I think assessment has many forms, and should be used as often as possible to ensure that students understand the concepts.

 

 

 

Student Teaching-Week 3

September 28, 2014

 

            Since we only had three days of school this week, this will be an earlier posting.  However, I feel as though I got to know a lot of the students a lot better this week due to my increase in frequency of teaching.  I taught something in every class, and in the case of second grade I taught the whole class for all of this week. 

            The students of Edgewood are very interesting in their diversity of backgrounds, both home life and seemingly cultural.  I say seemingly cultural diversity because I am not completely sure what their exact cultural backgrounds are, but I have gotten some information from my co-op.  I think that a student’s background is extremely interesting, and should absolutely be taken into account when planning and teaching. 

            Because Edgewood is an inclusion school and seems to be growing every few weeks in numbers of inclusion students, there are many students with various stories.  One little boy in the inclusion program has quite the home life.  His mother is a single mother with two of her three children in need of special education, and she is just recently battling stage three cancer.  This little boy is very docile, one of the sweetest and most compliant of the special needs students that I see at Edgewood.  He is so much so that I did not at first realize that he was in the special needs program.  He seemed a little bit different from the other students in his level of focus, but nothing that alarmed me or made me rethink my teaching plan.  He does not seem to need any specific assistance, but I had to ask myself what else could be going on inside his head in addition to his learning disability that might hinder his learning.  How would I handle that in my teaching?  How could I make his experience be on the same level as his peers when he is so obviously dealing with things that I would never know how to address?  I guess this would be something for his special needs teachers or the guidance department  to handle, but I feel as though I would want to be able to help him in some other way to make sure his experience was the best it could be for him as a student.

            Another aspect of keeping in mind the background of students is a student’s IEP or 504.  After reading and talking about these forms and processes in Music in Special Education, I feel as though these forms can be a huge insight into a student’s home life and how the teacher can make the best experience for the student in his or her classroom.  When I do have students with IEPs or 504s, I hope that I can be helpful and thorough enough as a teacher to make their learning experience the best it can be.  I also hope that I can bring these students as close as possible to the point at which other general education students are at when the class is over. 

            So far I have tried to include special needs students as much as possible in my lessons and activities.  I feel as though we are lucky as music teachers because everyone can participate or experience music in some way, shape, or form.  There are physical experiences, but for those who are physically handicapped there are also auditory and visual ways to experience music.  For those who have blindness or deafness, there are physical ways to experience music.  Even if a student is developmentally or physically disabled, we as music teachers can still help them experience and learn something from being in music class.  Several inclusion students come to mind from this past week that I felt gained a positive experience and possibly learned something new in music.  In second grade, a boy who was a high functioning autistic got the chance to use the smartboard.  He was thrilled and got a little carried away, but he recognized the letters that I asked him to move and actually did complete that task.  I feel that this was a step in recognizing the patterns that we were trying to recognize as a class, and this boy was able to recognize something with the help of his classmates that he might not have ever seen in another context.  Another student, also an autistic boy but much more severe, was apparently keeping the beat to a song that I was teaching to first grade.  I did not happen to see him doing so, but his aide said that he did not do that often.  This showed me that he was engaged in the song and had a musical experience, even if it was not on the same level as his peers.  One other student, again in second grade, surprised me quite a bit.  She does not have so much of a disability, but is emotionally disturbed due to fetal alcohol syndrome.  She is a sweet girl, but sometimes tends to need to wander around the room and talk to herself quietly to take a break.  In my lesson, I was reviewing how to discern lines and spaces on the staff.  She was chatting and being a bit goofy with her friend next to her.  I asked her, “Are you ready?”.  She looked at me and said yes.  I then asked the class if the note on the board was on a line or space, and she answered not only this question correctly but also which number line it was on.  This surprised me because at least half of the class was having trouble figuring out which way to count the lines or spaces, and she already understood this concept.  She obviously was able to keep up with the class and our activities, and even excelled at what other general education students were still trying to figure out.  Students like her always inspire me to help all special needs students in my classes to reach for their potential musical experiences.

 

 

 

Student Teaching-Week 4

October 5, 2014

 

            This week was probably the most interesting so far.  I taught fifth and kindergarten classes for the entire cycle of five days.  Thankfully fifth grade was first thing in the morning and kindergarten was right after lunch, so I had plenty of time to reevaluate how to present ideas and concepts.  Talk about switching gears! 

            For fifth grade, we learned a few low sol songs to start to build up their repertoire for when low sol is presented.  This was the first time that I sang an “add-on song”, or a song that keeps adding an element each time it was sung.  It actually went really well the first time, and the students recognized the concept from another song that they knew from before.  The song, “The Green Grass Grew All Around”, was a great way for me to practice memorizing something more difficult and trying to find more creative ways to remember it for myself.  I used hand gestures to narrate the song, which was the biggest help both to me and the students. 

            The second part of the lesson was something new for me.  I taught students a poem about the wind in the fall.  This poem was fairly simple, and was also very easily teachable.  We kept the beat on our legs while I went through it the first time, then I asked the obligatory listening questions.  Students learned this poem fairly fast, so this teaching process seemed very effective.  I had the most trouble trying to redirect students when they were asked to move over to the SMARTboard.  However, I learned that the best way to keep them on track was to have students sing the song once more as they moved over to the SMARTboard, which kept them continuously engaged in the activity. 

            The next step was to engage students in trying to decode the rhythm of the poem.  I had first only had students “golf clap” the poem without spoken words, but I found that this did not seem to be the best assessment of their physical feeling of the rhythm.  I immediately had students clap the same thing but fully clap so that I could clearly hear if the rhythm was correct.  I found that some students had some issues, but eventually those same students were able to answer the rhythm correctly later in the activity.  This told me that students benefitted from clapping out loud so that they could listen to their peers around them.

            The next step was to decode the rhythm.  Students were fairly easily able to decode the rhythms as they were simple and only two separate patterns.  The next step was to compose a melody as a class.  I found that if I first talked about moving in steps more than skips or leaps rather than ending on do or low la, students were able to comprehend composing a melody much faster.  I am not exactly sure why this order of presentation worked so well rather than the other way around, but I stuck to it for the rest of the cycle after the first day.  After composition of a melody was explained, most classes worked fairly easily and quietly during their working time.  I found that if some students were done earlier than others, having them find an also finished partner and singing their melody to that partner was a very effective way to occupy students who were done and give others more time to finish. 

            The hardest part of this lesson was the last song and activity, “Alley-Alley O”.  This was a thread the needle activity.  It definitely needed a demonstration, which I of course did not do on the first day, so the class ended rather chaotically.  My co-op has also never done this kind of song with her students before, so the students did not have a clue without a visual before attempting the song.  After day one, I asked for six volunteers who I somewhat picked because I knew they would be competent in a demonstration.  After the first day, the classes knew what to do but had an issue listening to the directions when I tried to break things down when they were first trying to thread the needle in a line.  Some classes were alright with this last part before actually doing the game with the song, but I still feel that I need to find a more effective way to keep the class under control at that point before we do the entire song. 

            I also wanted to mention teaching kindergarten this week, as I was presenting steady beat.  When my co-op said I would be basically explaining steady beat, I must have looked like a deer in the headlights.  However, she gave me some great ideas and ways to have students make connections to what they have been doing class.  For instance, reminding them of doing “big taps” on their knees when they have been singing, or tapping with the rhythm sticks when listening or singing.  She also suggested talking about how “music has a heartbeat”, and making a reference to how our heartbeat is always steady but still goes fast or slow.  Another great idea was giving the kindergarteners examples such as windshield wipers, rain drops, or a horse galloping and asking which were steady and which were not.  Nonetheless, on day one I floundered.  My co-op said that it was not that bad, but I had never felt so much at a loss for words.  I just could not think of how to describe such a simple thing even though I had already had ideas.  For day two, I had my lesson plan paper by my side for the whole lesson because I had written everything down.  This is not usual for me, but it helped immensely.  By the next day I was fine with remembering what to say and how to present things in a certain order, but I definitely needed the extra boost.  It amazed me how difficult it was to explain a thing that I take for granted.  

 

 

 

Student Teaching-Week 5

October 12, 2014

 

           During my past cycle of teaching, I taught both first, fourth, and most of fifth grade classes for the entire cycle. First grade was probably my most challenging lesson of the three due to my process, but both fourth and first grade had activities that encompassed all four processes.

            In first grade, we learned a song call “Falling Leaves”.  I then had students sit in rows of four, one row in front of each leaf on the board.  We then clapped “red leaf”, “yellow leaf”, etc. to find out how many sounds each color contained.  This was a connection to the previous activity with “Bee, Bee Bumblebee” because we had clapped the rhythm of that poem without labeling the rhythm, similar to what we were doing with the different colored leaves.  We then created three more lines of colors and also clapped each to see how many sounds each leaf color contained.  After this step, I then gave the students sitting in the front of their lines instruments, so only four students had instruments at a time.  We then sang “Falling Leaves” again and created a rondo form of singing the song and then speaking rhythmically through a line of four different colors of leaves.  During each refrain of the song, students passed the instrument back to the person behind them so that I was able to assess how each student comprehended playing the “sounds” of each line of colors. 

            The creating part of this lesson came from students making their own “verses” with the different colored leaves.  Not only were they unknowingly experiencing rondo form, but they were asked to think of quite a large vocabulary of colors.  The performing part of this lesson occurred as they sang, and then played and spoke through their composition.  They were able to create a rhythmic composition of sorts and then comprehend it enough to perform it with instruments.  The response part of this lesson was during each moment that students were able to detect how many sounds were in each of the colors of the leaves, preparing them for later rhythm identification and decoding.  The connection in this lesson actually happened before the students sang “Falling Leaves”.  When we were working with “Bee, Bee Bumblebee”, we learned to not only “put the words in our hands” but also “in our feet”.  Students clapped and said the poem, and then as a transition also stomped around the room to the words of the poem.  This helped students carry over sound or rhythm recognition into the activity with “Falling Leaves”. 

            In fourth grade, we learned the poem “Jellybelly”.  This poem had both rhyming words and a repeating rhythmic pattern.  First I taught the students the poem by rote.  After this process was finished, we kept a steady beat on our legs and said the poem.  I then showed the students a powerpoint with tika-tika, ta, and ti-ti rhythms next to the poem.  We then decoded the rhythm of the first line, leaving out the “mystery rhythm” (later known to them as ti-tika).  We also discovered the repeating rhythmic pattern.  After this we created body percussion movements to go along with the poem, a different movement for each of the four lines of the poem.  We then performed both versions that we had created.  After this process, students formed a circle and instruments were passed out.  Each instrument part had a specific line to play, and students were able to switch parts about three times.  After this process, we changed the instruments parts to playing on specific rhythms rather than full lines, which required a considerable increase in focus.  We also performed this process, and students had about three other chances to play different parts. 

            In this lesson activity, the creation occurred in the decision of movements for each line of the poem.  Students also had the opportunity to perform this multiple times, both times being different performances.  Another big performance opportunity occurred in the performance of the poem with students first playing parts on each line, then for each rhythm.  The responding moments in this activity occurred in the decoding of the rhythm of each line of the poem.  The students were also able to detect the different between steady beat and rhythm by remembering that our “hands make the sounds of the words” when we perform the rhythm instead of the steady beat.  The best moments of connection in this portion of the lesson were students’ abilities to comprehend the different between rhythm and steady beat, discovering that each line of the poem was exactly the same rhythmically, and the auditory assessment that I was able to make when they played their instrument on a specific rhythm.  I was able to generally assess if the class understood the differences between each rhythm.    

            My weaknesses are always easier to point out, especially when I’m in the midst of teaching.  I think my struggles lay the most in transitioning, still somewhat in phrasing certain important presentations of concepts, and sometimes solving a sequencing problem.  I find that transitioning works great when I figure out an effective way to do so, but my co-op helps me immensely in thinking of ways to fix lag time between activities.  I feel that I have gotten better with learning how to speak to the masses, but occasionally I will still say something and wonder how in heavens name I expected them to understand what I just said.  I have started to notice that if I simply slow down and take a breath for a moment, it fixes itself before it comes out of my mouth the wrong way.  Another problem that I have noticed, even just within the last few days, is my rearrangement of sequencing.  However, even though I feel that sequencing is one of my greatest strengths, I sometimes have trouble thinking of another way.  Thankfully, my co-op is again extremely helpful and talented at helping me rearrange things.

            I have also started to see more of my strengths as I have been teaching these last couple of weeks.  I realize that I almost never use a lesson plan during class to refer to, again due to my ability to sequence something so that I literally cannot teach students one thing without another having been taught earlier in the sequence.  I also feel that I have an appropriate demeanor with students, and they feel safe to try new things and want to learn with me.  I am always able to keep a good eye on my timing, and I feel confident in my activities and if they will be effective and worthwhile for students.  

 

 

 

Student Teaching-Week 6

October 19th, 2014

 

            This week in student teaching, I taught a portion of every class.  In fifth grade, I taught the extension on my composition lesson from the last couple of classes.  During third grade, I prepared the class to learn a new rhythm, the whole note, through a review and new song.  In fourth grade classes, I reviewed a song and then prepared them to recognize the sound of low la.  The afternoon consisted of kindergarten, second, and first grade classes.  In kindergarten, I taught students two new songs.  During second grade classes, students learned and worked with the form of a new song.  The last classes of the day were first grade, in which I taught a listening lesson for “Cuckoo in the Woods”.

            My fifth grade lesson has been a larger unit over about three separate lessons.  I began by introducing fifth graders to playing the barred instruments, then improvising on the instruments.  I taught them the poem “Have You Seen the Wind” as a base material for the next few lessons.  After students learned the poem, they used it to improvise on the barred instruments.  After this first lesson, students composed their own melodies.  They first used only solfege syllables underneath the rhythm of the poem, and then transferred their chosen solfege to the staff.  The last lesson in the unit consisted of learning how to play their melodies, and then performing them.  I believe that this collection of lessons was very important to the students and their development in the curriculum.  This is not only directly connected to PA Standard 9.1.3.A (Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.-composition) and 9.1.3.B (Recognize, know, use and demonstrate a variety of appropriate arts elements and principles to produce, review and revise original works in the arts.-compose and arrange, play an instrument), but also essential in further exploration in creativity within the year’s curriculum.  Whether this applies to composition or creating movements to follow a form, students will have experience feeling comfortable to further explore creating a musical concept of their own.  Creating and composing will be explored later in the curriculum, so this is a group of lessons that will be helpful for developing this skill. 

            The portion of third grade that I taught this week was very essential to my co-op’s presentation.  The third graders had been experiencing the whole note.  I had the job of reviewing a previously known song and teaching a new song that both contained a whole note rhythm.  I then had to make sure that students recognized the “long sound” in each song and how many beats it was worth.  This was important to the rest of the lesson because my co-op then presented the whole note.  This lesson aligned with PA Standard 9.1.3.A (Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.-rhythm) and 9.1.3.C (Recognize and use fundamental vocabulary within each of the arts forms.), and was essential to the year’s curriculum in the use of rhythm in the classroom.  In order for students to continue to use, practice, and possibly compose with this rhythm throughout the year, this lesson must have proper informal assessment of students’ comprehension of the rhythm. 

            Fourth grade explored recognizing low la without labeling it just yet.  They used a song that I taught them last week, “Land of the Silver Birch”, to recognize the lowest sounds using body solfege.  This portion of the lesson correlates with PA Standard 9.1.3.A (Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.-pitch) in that students are recognizing the lowest pitch.  This is especially important to the curriculum plan because fourth graders are soon to be learning to label low la.  Without this early recognition, students will not have enough auditory experience in recognizing the note among others in a song. 

            Kindergarten is always an important time for a solid curriculum.  This week I both reinforced steady beat with “Woodpecker Tapping” and worked on solo singing with “Brown Bear”.  This lesson encompassed PA Standard 9.1.3.A (Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.-pitch), 9.1.3.B (Recognize, know, use and demonstrate a variety of appropriate arts elements and principles to produce, review and revise original works in the arts.-sing), and 9.1.3.C (Recognize and use fundamental vocabulary within each of the arts forms.).  I have noticed that kindergarten lessons more often than not include at least two if not three standards.  This makes sense with the curriculum for kindergarten in that there are so many important musical basics to establish.  Repetition is best with kindergarten, so the reinforcement of steady beat and using the term “steady beat” was needed when singing and playing along with the song “Woodpecker Tapping”.  The same applied to “Brown Bear” in the repetition of experiencing solo singing and pitch matching. 

            Second grade’s lesson for the week also encompassed standard 9.1.3.A (Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.-form), 9.1.3.B (Recognize, know, use and demonstrate a variety of appropriate arts elements and principles to produce, review and revise original works in the arts.-sing, compose and arrange), and  9.1.3.C (Recognize and use fundamental vocabulary within each of the arts forms.).  Students were able to recognize the form of “Apple Picker’s Reel” and create movements to go along with the form, both sitting as a class and in three different groups.  This is helpful to the second grade curriculum in the same way as fifth grade.  Second graders now understand how to create movements and feel comfortable being creative in the music classroom.

            First grade’s lesson encompassed PA Standard 9.1.3.A (Know and use the elements and principles of each art form to create works in the arts and humanities.-duration, form).  First graders listened to “Cuckoo in the Woods” from Carnival of the Animals and recognized the pattern of the “cuckoo” sounds.  This was a great way to prepare students to do more listening during the school year.  Not only did they learn how to predict a musical pattern, but they also began the lesson by sitting still and listening.  Critical listening is not only a music curriculum skill, but a life skill in all of their schooling.

 

 

 

Student Teaching-Week 7

October 26th, 2014

 

            Modification during instruction is something that I find myself doing constantly.  There are many different learning types within a classroom, and making sure each learner is involved is one of the most important jobs of a teacher. 

            One of my first strategies for modifying a lesson is re-wording a question.  I think that teachers very often either say too much or say too little and confuse students in that way.  Sometimes a succinct direction being given is much more effective than giving a longer and more thorough explanation.  Students are more astute than we sometimes realize, and I think that they process things in the way that we need them to if we simply say what we mean right off the bat. 

            Another strategy I have for trying to change a class’s response is switching to a visual or kinesthetic explanation.  This could involve me clapping my hands over visual beat markers while I say a rhythm to help students more easily decode a rhythm, or having students get up and move around the room to the rhythm by golf clapping and walking in the rhythm of the song.  I have found that visual cues seem to get the most students when I need to move along at a faster pace in my lesson, but kinesthetic strategies seem to engrain concepts such as tempo and rhythm by the end of the lesson in a faster manner. 

            Auditory problem solving is sometimes tricky.  When students do not hear something specific in a listening lesson or song, it often requires a combination of strategies.  One of my first strategies is to slow down whatever it is that they are listening to.  The second strategy that I might have to implement is pointing students’ attention to similarities and differences.  One thing that my co-op has reinforced with me, especially with form lessons, is asking about the differences.  These differences could simply be rhythmic, the difference between the phrases of a melody, or the differences in sounds.  For example, in kindergarten this past week I was teaching a song that involved tempo.  I did not introduce this word to them, but we did talk about why the verses of the song sounded different.  Most students first gave me answers such as the difference in words or what the characters in the song were doing.  I then had to prompt them with how the characters were moving.  Usually after this question, many more students raised their hands and one would easily answer that “the witch was going faster and the ghost was floating”.  I would then ask by show of hands if floating was faster or slower than the witch, and most were able to identify that the ghost was slower.  Differences in music are what aid students in recognizing patterns.  The patterns that they recognize can lead them to remember what note goes where on the staff, and eventually learn how to read music by reading the pattern of notes. 

            I think development of the learning process for children is extremely interesting.  I would not like to go into the more research based aspect, but draw from my observations.  For younger grade levels such as kindergarten and first grade, repetition is extremely important.  Not only do students enjoy singing songs that they already know, but they start to recognize the answers to critical thinking questions much faster.  For instance, I asked first graders what happens after you get out in the game “Bee, Bee, Bumblebee”.  They were able to easily answer that you “go over to the honey pot and play the steady beat on the sticks”.  I briefly gave them an example of playing the rhythm of the poem on the rhythm sticks and asked if I was doing the right thing if I was in the honey pot.  They very enthusiastically answered no and were able to explain that I was playing the rhythm instead of the steady beat.  We have been playing “Bee, Bee, Bumblebee” for several classes just to start off the class with a fun game, but this is also reinforcing steady beat and rhythm recognition.  This makes some of the planning a little bit less complicated for a teacher due to the repetition that may need to happen each class for younger grade levels.

            The leaps and bounds that occur during second to fourth grade are really astounding.  Even by second grade, most students can recognize rhythms quite easily, and their recognition of patterns both auditory and aurally is quite rapid.  From second to fourth grade, they are learning a huge amount, making planning for the teacher a roller coaster.  I was able to present high la to second grade this week, and I will easily admit that the first class I was not only a little overwhelmed with how much I had wanted to accomplish with them, but I also did not get to finish my entire lesson.  I presented high la to the second graders, and I felt extremely responsible for their comprehension of this new solfege note.  We not only learned it, but played a matching game with various patterns, found it in a previous song, and tried to find it in a new song.  I had also already finished a movement activity with them, and had planned to finish with a writing activity related to high la.  The second graders absorbed so much within that class, and I felt exhausted trying to cover everything that I had planned.  When teaching second to fourth graders, there are many extremely important milestones to cover, and planning can often be jam-packed. 

            Fifth graders are some of my favorite students.  I feel as though I can begin to really challenge their musicianship and have musical conversations with them.   I really enjoyed doing the long-term composition activity with them.  I learned a lot about the musicians that they have become, and I was impressed with their creativity.  I think that it is extremely important to implement creativity in every grade level, but the fifth graders are the first age group that I have noticed have a real creative vision.  When planning for fifth grade, I feel that this would be the group of students that I would start to really challenge as musicians with more composition and improvisation to start to use vocabulary and concepts learned. 

 

            

 

Student Teaching-Week 8

November 2, 2014

 

         Student teaching is just flying by.  This week was the last week in which I was only teaching for half of the day and half of the classes.  Next week I will be teaching the entire morning plus all of the second grade classes in the afternoon.  I really like how my co-op handles my learning experience.  Not only does she take notes and give me helpful and intelligent feedback, but she also seems to allow me to learn on my own.  Since there are five days in the cycle, I am able to teach each lesson at least three to four times, and for fifth grade, five times.  I have ample time to teach each of my lessons once through, make corrections to either the sequence or the actual method of teaching that I chose, and teach the lesson over again to make it the best learning experience for my students.  When I come to this step in my teaching, my co-op will often let me teach and feel as though I am the only teacher in the classroom.  She will then give me minimal feedback after I have finished the lesson, but mostly allows me to learn on my own.  This has not only made me responsible for my teaching, but for the success of my students as well. 

            My co-op has mentioned that I am her first student teacher that she has ever had who is primarily a pianist.  I really feel very lucky to be a pianist and have the skills that I have in being a pianist in this day and age because of the demand for well-rounded musicians in our field.  I am very easily able to sit down and sight read any of the fifth grade choir music, and I have no issue providing simple improvised accompaniments for singing games or movement activities.  This allows me to also check in on how my students are singing and processing the activity because the piano is placed in a very observational spot in the room.  I am able to sit at the piano and watch all of the students do the activity of the moment while I am playing.  Also, in being a pianist I am able to play without thinking and still assess what students are doing.  I feel that this skill would also be extremely helpful with high school or middle school music teacher positions, especially in a choral setting.  This would be a great perk for me in the job application process.  To be able to sit down and play while still teaching and listening is extremely hard for many, as I have seen with some of my piano tutoring students.  Being a pianist and being a singer are both equally as challenging, but doing both at the same time is definitely a multi-tasking activity that requires development and time. 

            I think one musicianship skill that I have improved upon is my ability to sing and model correctly.  I was a bit nervous about using my voice, even when I first started teaching in elementary praxis.  Attending school alongside peers who are probably going to end up being operatic singers does not help boost your confidence if you are already self-conscious about your voice, let alone singing to teach children how to be musicians. This was one thing that I have had to overcome from my first semester at Westminster.  Even doing voicing in Chapel Choir intimidated the daylight out of me.  I will say that having voice lessons and pushing myself to sing in front of my studio of singers definitely helped, especially since I had such a lovely voice teacher.  However, elementary praxis showed me that my voice had value as a teacher, and that there was absolutely no reason for me to be afraid to use it.  In fact, I have actually had less trouble than some of my peers in adapting to teaching in an elementary classroom because my voice is very simple and easy for children to mimic.  I have never had an issue with students being able to match my pitch and echoing my songs that I teach them.  Even if I start a song on too low a pitch, I find that students are still able to easily hear and sing back the songs that I teach them.  I learned that my voice is now one of my main teaching tools, and that I have just as much need to go to an ENT as an opera singer because my voice is my livelihood. 

            Another musicianship skill that I feel that I have drastically improved upon is my solfege knowledge and recognition.  Because my co-op is mainly Kodaly based, I am constantly incorporating decoding, using, and practicing solfege.  I have learned how to very quickly memorize different patterns for students to sing back to me, and I feel fluent enough to be able to play a game such as poison pattern and make up patterns as I go along.  This game is not one in which you need to constantly memorize all of the patterns that you use, but it should be easy to call and have students echo on various patterns without having to think too much about each one.  I also feel that my ear has been more fully developed because I have to often lead warm ups with solfege patterns, or I need to be able to transfer a melody from the words to the solfege pattern.   Another multi-tasking activity is pointing, hand-signing, and assessing all at the same time.  This sometimes happens when we are learning how to read a new song or a song that has a new note, and I must be assessing while still helping students read through the song. 

            In trying to be a well-rounded musician at Westminster, I feel that I have been able to model good musicianship for my students as well as show that music class is a place where mistakes can be made and accepted.  In making my own mistakes and trying again, I am also showing students that mistakes are meant to be learned from, and that music is a place to try your best.

 

 

 

Student Teaching-Week 9

November 9, 2014

 

            In the past two sessions for student teaching seminar, we had the pleasure of having lectures and questions answered by Sharon Morrow and Christopher Tranberg.  Both presenters had extremely helpful insights and experiences to share with us. 

Dr. Morrow was our first presenter during class two weeks ago.  She spoke to us about vocal health for music teachers.  To be honest, I was never really concerned with my vocal health as a music teacher because I am not primarily a vocalist.  However, I have already noticed how my voice feels as my teaching day increases.  I experienced similar vocal feelings during the summer when I was teaching six to eight music classes a day for five days a week for summer arts camps.  My throat felt almost strep-like, and I needed to practically guzzle down water for the rest of the day to feel back to normal.  My voice was obviously not used to being used as often as it was during the summer, and now during student teaching I have started to notice similar sensations. 

One of the most compelling things that Dr. Morrow spoke about was the comparison of the number of vibrations that teachers’ vocal chords go through each day.  I was astounded at how music teachers are almost double in number in the use of their voices compared to classroom teachers.  Now that I student teach in an elementary school, I certainly understand the frequency of vocal usage in teaching.  If I had learned this information before student teaching or teaching any elementary students for a full day, I may have not believed it at first.  Elementary teachers literally cannot get away with not speaking, singing, or giving directions vocally all the time.  Elementary students especially need help with pitch matching, learning songs, and just general repetition of directions, all achieved through either vocal modeling or vocal use. 

Another point that Dr. Morrow made in her presentation was the importance of hydrating and seeing and ENT.  I really have to consciously try to drink as much water as I can, and even then I still do not think that I drink enough fluids.  I certainly get my fill of coffee every morning, but I still need to work on making up for the dehydration that occurs after drinking coffee.  Seeing an ENT was something I never thought at all about, but now I feel as though my first step out of college and into a new job will be to find one nearby.  Being the pianist that I am, I never thought I would be caring for my vocal health as much as the protection of my hands.  Dr. Morrow has certainly put my voice at the top of my priority list. 

Mr. Chistopher Tranberg was one of the most helpful and terrifying presenters I have ever encountered.  He was so incredibly helpful because he was honest and obviously drawing from very real experiences and thoughts that he has as an administrator.  He was terrifying because he made me realize that I will not only be having my own classroom soon, but also going through the process of trying to find a place to teach in the first place. 

I was relieved and nervous about multiple things that he mentioned.  Most things that sent my heart racing were the things that were concrete.  I feel that I am going to be writing about fifty cover letters before I come up with the one that I will send in to a school.  I will probably also send in hard copies to way too many people that probably do not care, but at least I will feel that I have tried to make an impression, as Mr. Tranberg suggested.  My resume has always been an important part of my website, and I have tried to keep it updated as often as possible.  Mr. Tranberg also suggested making this stand out among others, which makes me feel much better about the two page resume format that I have now. 

The actual interview process that Mr. Tranberg described was intimidating, but I feel much more confident due to this conversation and our interview “carousel” during seminar.  When it comes to speaking for myself and answering questions, I feel that I always try to make the process feel more like a conversation.  Turning an interview into a conversation was one point that Mr. Tranberg made, and I was thrilled that he said so.  I feel that I would naturally be able to do this in an interview, so I was a bit more relieved about this process of applying.  I also liked how he mentioned how to answer certain questions.  For discussing weaknesses, speaking generally and not too much on actual teaching content is a better tactic because interviewers do not want to hear how an applicant has struggles with their subject.   I also really liked his suggestion of speaking in briefer answers but giving interviewers the option of hearing more of your thoughts on the subject. 

When it comes to the teaching demonstration, I feel that this is completely necessary but rather a bad determining factor of a teacher.  This is such an artificial environment, and is the exact opposite of creating a learning environment to build lasting relationships with students so that they feel safe to learn.  This is a brief skill demonstration, and Mr. Tranberg made a great point in relation to this part of the application process.  Building any kind of positive relationships with students within this short period of time will show your interviewers that you can create a learning environment in a short amount of time.  I think this would generate a discussion on the applicant’s potential for a prolonged amount of time with students, and could be a really positive experience and helpful to the applicant.  However, the connections to the students are essential.  I like thinking about the teaching demonstration this way.  Before this presentation, I was terrified for this part of the interview process.  However, now I see it as an extremely positive experience if I make it so for the students.   

 

 

 

Student Teaching-Week 10

November 16, 2014

 

        I can’t believe how fast student teaching has seemed to go this semester.  I feel like I just started, and I am already scheduling my last observation.  Time flies when you’re having fun! 

            This week in student teaching I have started teaching for the entire day, all classes and all grades.  This has been an interesting experience so far because most classes have earned their game day.  Game day is earned by accumulating forty “brownie points”.  Brownie points are my co-op’s system for behavior.  I really like her system because this is not only cumulative over many class periods, but it depends on the entire class’s behavior.  Each class period, the class starts off with five brownie points.  The class can lose points, but cannot earn them back.  This is a great incentive for them because the fewer points they earn over a class period, the longer it will take them to get to Game Day.  The class must work together and cooperate in order to earn their game day.  I also really like this system because Game Day consists of music songs and games that students already know, and these songs have been used to teach specific concepts to them.  Students remember these songs and games so well, which tells me that they also remember the concepts extremely well. 

            One thing about Game Days that have really stumped me is the classroom management of this kind of class period.  My co-op has done these kinds of days with her students many times, and has a firm grasp on her expectations.  I have yet to figure out exactly what I am willing to take, and when I have to start to be stricter with students.  Sometimes I mistake their excitement for unacceptable behavior.  Even if they are doing their Game Day with the student teacher, students should be able to maintain the same behavior with me as with my co-op.  I still have many moments when I do not want to be the “meanie”.  I am still learning when students are excited and I can accept a little more noise, and when students are being just plain old disrespectful and I need to curb their “relaxation” of their behavior.  My placement school has especially high expectations for their students, and I truly appreciate the rules and expectations for behavior that they have set in place.  However, as a new teacher I am always trying to find that line between acceptable and unacceptable. 

            Sometimes during the Game Days that I have experienced so far, the students suggest games that I do not know and my co-op must lead that particular game.  When she does lead the games, it gives me a chance to watch how she handles Game Day for different classes and what expectations she sets.  Most of the techniques that my co-op uses as classroom management during these Game Days are very clear and concise directions to students, and also involve few rules that she always expects will be followed.  One technique that she uses is the strike system.  I had other lesson plans, and she normally also has alternate lesson plans for the class.  My plan was to use the lesson plans for the classes for the next cycle, and those who did not get their game day would then have the lesson instead for that cycle.  This is usually her strategy for classes since not all of them reach game day at the same time.  However, she warns her more rowdy classes that if they misbehave and are not following directions, they receive a strike.  Once they hit three strikes, then Game Day is over and the class is then back to a normal music class with the lessons that were planned happening instead.  Unfortunately I felt that I should have utilized this system a few times, but I did not.  Again, I was afraid of the “meanie” factor and did not want to be the bad guy.  However, I have had moments when I have needed to be stricter.  I felt like the bad guy, but the class seemed to be just as compliant as any other time, only quieter and better listeners. 

            Another strategy for Game Day that my co-op used was insisting on absolutely no talking while she was giving directions or switching to a new game.  I thought this would be impossible for some classes to do, but they actually have enough self-control to keep themselves in check to carry on with their Game Day.  Sometimes it was hard for me to believe that they would stay quiet during each switch and direction, but if my co-op insisted then it was done.  I also feel that my struggles with certain classroom management are dependent on my knowledge of the students and their potentials.  I have tried my best to get to know all of them as best as possible, but I feel that until I have my own classroom for at least a year I may not have super solid expectations.  Also, classroom management just seems to require years of experience, no matter the age group.  Understanding how different ages of students respond to different behavioral management techniques is basically a study of human nature, and unless you have had a prolonged amount of time with students it seems to be a difficult aspect of teaching. 

            I would also like to reflect on how some other things have been going particularly well this last week.  I feel that my transitions and my ability to redirect students’ attention and focus on a different detail have improved.  My co-op will ask me what I thought I needed to do better in the lesson, and I can point out most of what she was going to tell me to adjust.  My reflection skills have improved as far as being able to think of better ways of presenting, practicing, and helping students critically analyze new music concepts.  I can easily say that my idea bank on many of these levels has vastly expanded thanks to my co-op.