Field Work Assignment 2

Today I observed a 5th grade elementary music class. The warm up activity was to sing a major scale using solfege. The group then did some individual singing. The CT sang sol la sol mi and each student sang this pattern Individually to the best of their ability. The rest of the class was spent on mallet instruments. The CT discussed how tone is produced through vibration, she named each mallet instrument, and the students were able to play the mallet instruments. The CT took off the Bs and Fs so that a pentatonic scale was left and dissonance would be avoided.

The CT had a slow pacing. The class time was spent doing only two activities (tonal and mallets) but there were enough sub parts to these activities to prevent too much attention loss from the students. For example, the mallet activity involved singing and playing one macrobeat with “air mallets” at the end of the song, she described the instruments in detail, she allowed the students to explore the instruments, and she had them sing their song and use the actual instruments. Since this was the first time using mallet instruments so the detailed instructions were necessary, but in the future shorter activities would be ideal to keep the attention of the students.

The CT sequences activities through several weeks. Her tonal activities build on each other from week to week. Her instrument activities also build in complexity from week to week. She will have the students sing one week, then sing and add hand motions similar to playing the instrument, then sing and play the instruments. Then the instrumental part might become more involved.

The CT verbalizes instructions the majority of the time. Sometimes she will verbalize and model good and bad technic, but she rarely instructs through just modeling. This method slows her pacing and sometimes loses the attention of the students.

The CT mostly uses questions as a classroom management technic. When she sees an undesirable behavior she often says “Do we [insert undesirable behavior]?” The students respond “no” and know to stop that behavior. She also uses questions to keep students engaged such as asking about the materials the instruments are made of. The CT determines most of the content but the students also have some choices in the classroom such as which mallet instrument to play (xylophone, glockenspiel, or bass bar). The CT will make decisions herself at times to increase efficiency or promote safety, but she does allow for student choices in the classroom.

Field Work Assignment 1

I observed a 2nd grade music class. The CT had the students sit in squads. She taped lines on the carpet and placed name tags where she wanted each student to sit. She mixes the seating arrangement every day so the students find their seats by finding their name tag.

Class began with some tonal patterns. The CT sang different combinations of sol, la, and mi and gave the hand signs for each syllable. At first the students echoed the teacher, but later the CT gave only hand signs and the students had to sing the pattern. When the students were successful, the CT gave hand signs for a new pattern, but if the students needed help she sang the pattern and had them repeat. The students had trouble going from mi to la and sol to la because these were new patterns, but generally going from mi to sol was fine. I believe this activity was generalization at the symbolic association level because students sang syllables based on the hand signs that were shown.

The majority of the class was spent on playing rhythm sticks while singing a rote song. The rote song had been learned in a previous class. First the class reviewed the rote song itself, then clapping motions. Then the students did clapping motions with a partner. Once the clapping motions were mostly accurate the CT passed out rhythm sticks. The students transferred their movements from clapping to using rhythm sticks instead. This song had been worked on for several weeks, adding a greater degree of movement and difficulty each class. The sequence in this class was also from easy to difficult and if problems arose the CT removed a layer of difficulty to solidify musical ideas. This activity was done at the aural/ oral stage because no labels were given.

The teacher ended class by asking the students three questions: What did you learn today? What would you like to learn more about? What can you do better next time? The teacher ends each class with these questions for 2nd grade and older. With younger students she would end with a goodbye song.

The students became distracted easily. The CT reminded students to sit up and face her throughout the class. She also recognized good behavior. While passing out rhythm sticks, she did so only to the students who were focused and practicing their partner clapping motions. When lining up to leave, she dismissed the rows that were most well behaved first. The CT also stopped undesirable behavior early. If students were messing around with rhythm sticks, she took them away. If the students were singing as a class but some students were getting ahead, she stopped the song and reminded them to listen to each other and sing at the same tempo. If she gave instructions, rhythm sticks were to be placed on the floor so they would not become a distraction.

Throughout the class the CT balanced routine with creativity and review with new material. She was able to spend a lot of time teaching but also had to deal with classroom management. There was also a good mix of partner activities and class activities.

Exiting Babble Teaching Reflection

https://youtu.be/9njAZtC-SrY

I did an activity with resting tone using the song “La Raspa” and an activity with macro and micro beats using the song “Put Your Foot Out the Sand.” I changed both songs to the key of F so that they would fit in my vocal range and so the flow between activities would be smoother. As a result I did have an efficient transition and was able to effectively keep my tonality.

My lesson plans were very simplistic. To show the resting tone I repeated “La Raspa” and paused in different places to have the students play the air guitar and sing the resting tone. At first I just paused when a phrase ended on tonic. On subsequent repetitions I paused on dominant and other scale degrees so that it was more and more challenging to audiate tonic. This was good sequencing, however the increasing difficulty made it harder for me to continue the song where I left off. This caused me to forget lyrics. In the future I would sing the song without lyrics and practice the song for several days before teaching so that my audiation and memory are more solid and reliable.

For “Put Your Foot Out the Sand” I planned to start with simple movement then make the movement more complex and active. I began by having the students walk in place to the macro and micro beats. Then I had them walk around the room. I tried to use images such as hot sand to guide the movement and connect to the song. However, when I let students choose the movement, the movement became more random. I was hoping they would connect to the song in their ideas of movement, such as walking in mud or water. Next time, I will give more ideas for how to move for the first few repetitions then say, “We walked through hot sand and mud, what else can we walk through?” so the students will know that I want their movement to connect to the song.

Overall my musicianship was good. I mostly kept consistent tempo and tonality but I can improve my expression. My preparation was also good in some ways. I planned to give very short instructions and model as much as possible and I think I succeeded. For next time I will try to be a bit more creative and diverse in my activities and know my song better by learning it farther in advance.