The second field experience opportunity I received was getting to observe Mr. Kley Todd’s middle school class. This was an interesting class, as it was a very exploratory one, without much structure or set curriculum. He prefaced our experience with the fact that the students in this class do just about everything: Listening quizzes, choir singing, sight-singing, solfege syllables, music technology, and more. This class was not a voluntary one. Due to certain scheduling conflicts in the school, this class was involuntarily selected. From looking at the class, however, I personally couldn’t tell that these students didn’t willingly join this class. Mr. Todd is teaching them very difficult concepts to them, without stressing to them that they are hard. The students in the class were very engaged and willing to learn more. During their listening quiz at the beginning of the class, they were very focused and not talking amongst each other while the video was playing (even though you could expect that they might get distracted during an activity like this). As they were responding on their computers, they were silent and very focused on their work. Once they submitted their assignments and the floor was opened up to discussion guided by critical thinking questions, they were very excited to speak about the song. They brought up very intriguing points about harmony, the story, and even related the song to others that they have heard before, and even asked to listen some more. Through personal experience, I know that an activity like this could have been challenging for some. However, because Mr. Todd has gotten the students accustomed to these types of activities, they are able to be engaged with no problem. About halfway through the class, Mr. Todd told us that there would be a student coming into class that was very much a struggle when it came to classroom management. When the child entered, and started to misbehave, Mr. Todd handled it very well. He was very stern with the student, saying phrases like “you know better”, etc. But also asking him politely to cease the distractions or follow directions. This combination of stern but kind is also essential. Too stern, or mean sounding can make situations with a problem student worse. However, Mr. Todd handled the entire situation, and classroom management in general, very well. Near the end of class, Mr. Todd had to do a brief explanation of how to turn in a project that the students had been working on. He warned them that there were many steps, and that they needed to pay close attention. This foreword helped for some, but for other students, this long, complicated explanation was more of a time to goof off and be a distraction to others. Mr. Todd did know that this explanation was going to have this effect on his students, but it was the most efficient way he could think of to address these steps to his class. I feel that there is a more efficient way to do this, and limit distractions by other students, but Mr. Todd handled this situation well too because it was the only option he had at that point in time! Mr. Todd’s experimental classroom taught me that students can and will be engaged in different aspects of music, and sometimes, they will be interested in all of them at once. Their level of engagement and enjoyment stems from the educator, and I feel that Mr. Todd is the perfect educator for a class like this.
MUED271 My first practicum experience was with Mrs. Kari Carpenter at Mountain View Elementary School. I did not quite know what to expect, but I came into the school with an open mind. The elementary general music class had just come from an assembly where a magician performed some tricks about books. Mrs. Carpenter knew about this, and actually opened the floor for the students to discuss their experience before class. This was a great activity for many reasons. The students were able to share their favorite parts, and laugh with each other about the memories they had just created. Not only that, but the discussion at the beginning of class definitely lessened the amount of extra discussion between the students for the remainder of the class, because they had already told their stories to each other! She then had the students get their assigned ukuleles off of the wall in the back. They were numbered, and every student knew his or her assigned number very easily. This must be something that they do a lot in the class! At this point, as the students sat back down, we, the MUED students, were invited to grab a ukulele, and join their circle on the ground. We were able to help her as she tuned instruments, reviewed chords, and even taught new chords to them as we sang through a popular song. At this point, Mrs. Carpenter would get occupied with certain situations (in this case, an extremely out of tune ukulele), and would allow the students to get louder in volume and more rambunctious. However, as soon as she was not preoccupied, they knew to settle down and work to focus on the activity at hand. After this, they listened to The Addams Family Theme Song, responded to it, and then proceeded to learn the bass line and snap(s) part to the song on the xylophones. This took an immense amount of classroom management as well, as there were two students at each xylophone. This observation at Mountain View taught me so much about the importance of classroom management. The ability to set standards of behavior for your students while they are in your classroom is important, but being able to enforce those standards so diligently is essential for the overall success of a classroom. Because of Mrs. Carpenter’s ability to keep students occupied, and using different pedagogical strategies for classroom management, she played a huge role in ensuring their success in learning during her lesson. During the observation, however, she also informed us that she planned too much into one day. It is always great to plan ahead, but sometimes it may hinder learning in the slightest. Trying to fit too many educational activities into a small amount of time may be efficient, but may also not gurantee that a student is fully understanding the material at hand because of the fast pace of the lesson. Students need reflection time, and some guiding questions to help them process the meaning of activities like these. Overall, my experience with Mrs. Carpenter at Mountain View Elementary was fantastic. I enjoyed learning so many beneficial things from her class!
MUED271Keister Music Night was a wonderful experience. Keister Elementary School has a music program run by Mrs. Hagy (http://web.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/kes/). The Music Night is for students of all ages to come together and experience many different musical activities created by JMU Music Education students. For our project, Alexis Anderson (alexisandersonmusic.weebly.com) and I were assigned to a Kindergarten room. Along with this, we also had to create our project around a pre-determined National Core Music Standard. (http://www.nationalartsstandards.org/) Our standard was the first one. Which stated that students will “generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work”. This was a challenging idea to put forth for kindergarteners at first. I, personally, have experience with music technology, and through these experiences, I have found that this way of experiencing music is intriguing to younger children. This is where we decided to use Makey Makey and Scratch as the main component of our project. To tie in our standard, we decided that setting the Makey Makey up to drawings of orchestra instruments and assigning each drawing its own sound to correlate, we could help students conceptualize the idea of an orchestra. Along with that, and time-permitting, we would also allow the students to draw their own instruments to take home. This was not only intended to teach students about the instruments in an orchestra, (woodwinds, strings, brass, and percussion) but also to expose them to the shape of said instruments, and also teach them more about the concept and capabilities of music technology! During the event, things didn’t always quite go as planned. We hadn’t quite thought about kindergarteners deep enough to consider their ways. Every student was different. They were easily entertained, but also easily distracted; which is okay! We found ways to keep attention and introduce different activities in a timely manner. The reactions varied among students. Some were very engaged and interested, while some tried our experience, and moved on quickly. This, again, is not a bad thing. It only shows us that every human is different. Even younger ones! We also didn’t take account of how loud the atmosphere would be during the experience. There were two other projects happening in our room, along with the vocals of ourselves, the music, the students, and the parents, it got noisy! The loud space did hinder our experience a bit, but we made up for it by communicating with the kids and parents about the shape of instruments, and the technology, along with the sound that they made. There were also varying reactions to our experience. Some students were amazed by the “magic” of music, while some ended up a little frustrated at some points. The parents as well; some were curious as to how the technology worked, and how we got the sounds to play through our laptop. I am very thankful for the opportunity to get our feet wet with kindergarteners at Keister Music Night. I had personally never introduced music technology to a large group of young kids, but it was a great experience! Overall, the students, along with Alexis and I, had a great amount of fun conducting this experience! #MUED271 |
EricaThis page will be for videos of myself teaching, lesson plans, and reflections. Archives
February 2020
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