**Week 7**

This week we concentrated on our test more than anything. After taking the test I can say there were parts that I knew quite easily and very well, and other parts that I struggled with a bit. My biggest problem with the test was that I was unable to make it to class on Wednesday and there were things that were on the test that had been presented to the class that day, so I was definitally at a large disadvantage on a few questions because of that. However, because we were given the extra credit I'm confident that it will help make up for the points. Part of the way I study is by going to class and taking lots of notes. I'm an auditory learning, so I can read something out of a book and get next to nothing from it, but if I hear what is being said than it's a totally different story. I will remember everything quite easily, and writing down what I hear just helps me reinforce that. I really believe that writing is a great reinforcer for learning, so another thing I did to study was write out every answer to each question on the study guide. It helped me remember a lot of things. However, some of the questions asked very specific things, such as vocal characteristics and ability, and I just think that it is so easy to get those things confused, no matter how many times you go over them, so I'm unsure about how I did on that part. Also, a few things on the study guide, like parts of the lesson plan, I thought was supposed to be taken from the W.S. we did in class with the 8 steps, not what was written out. That was another thing I unfortunately missed in class on Wednesday. I feel that I was prepared for it as I could have been. I read the book, attended most classes, took notes, and did the study guide. For me these are the best strategies.
Mid-Semester Review- So far I have learned much more than I had anticipated. Although I knew what music was and some of the specifics about it such as the notes, I did not know the proper definition of rhythm, steady beat, melody, or any of those things we had gone over. Also, the Kodlay was all new information to me as well. I really like the overall structure in class, I think that it is very inviting and friendly. I am also enjoying learning to play the recorder. I think I may be one of the only people in the class that have never had any experience with it at all. It is a very fun instrument and now that I know how much music can impact other parts of the curriculum I would like to use it in a future classroom. My only complaint or thing I would want to change would probablly be the structure of the test. While I do think that most things on the test were fair, I just felt extremely pressed for time on it. Because it was short answer it took more time than I think many of us expected, so if it is possible, for the next test I think it would be better to either have a few less questions of tell everyone ahead of time it is okay to stay a little bit later. Especially because we had so many interruptions during it, I am easily distracted and whenever anyone is talking I can't really focus. This isn't a huge complaint or anything, I just think the test would be a better representative of what we are learning if we are just given a little more time. I really like the class this far, especially learning the recorder, and hope we continue on at the same pace!

Teaching Assignment #1/ Journal #6

This week everyone in the class had an opportunity to present a lesson. Although I have given lessons before, this was my first experience doing a music lesson. As you can tell from the video posted above, there were many things that I struggled with and definitely need to improve, but also some things that I feel went very well. I don't think I would be able to pinpoint one thing that I found "most difficult," because there were several areas I was extremely nervous about. For starters, in case you haven't already noticed, I do not have much of a singing voice. I had trouble getting my voice in tune and trying to use my head voice. It was a little bit easier for me because I eventually ended up picking a song that had only 2 different notes, but I still had a difficult time figuring out how to hit those notes. Another big issue for me was the nerves and being scared to present. Although I know we are all going to be teachers and should be used to standing in front of everyone and putting ourselves out there, I know I do not stand along when I say the difference between doing this for our peers and friends as oppose to young children is huge! It amazed me how much more nervous I was to get up in front of everyone and present than I am when I go in and work with first and second graders. Although I am nervous in both situations, when you present in front of older people you feel like you are being judged much more harshly and it makes it uncomfortable. Yet another thing I struggled with was creativity in the lesson. I wanted to do something unique that I though everyone would enjoy, so coming up with original ideas proved to be a bit more challenging than I had anticipated.
While watching my lesson it is clear to me the things that I did not do well, and would definitely want to improve on for the future. First of all, I asked way to many rhetorical questions. Some times after I would ask them I would realize what I was doing but there are times in the presentation that I asked rhetorical questions and did not even realize. I was very fortunate that no one in the class acted as a disruptive child and responded no when I asked them if they wanted to sing again or sit in a circle, but this is something I need to make myself more aware of because in the future it could definitely happen. Another thing I do not think I did very well was make myself clear and certain points. I found myself stumbling over sentence and words, and while every teacher gets mixed up in what they are saying sometimes, I noticed I would start to mumble when I did this which is never a good thing. For the group that I had I may have been going a little too fast also, but because the lesson was prepared for K-1st grade I was acting as if everyone was that age, which explains the reasoning for that. I also mixed up a little minor things, like I forgot Whitley needed a partner and went back to the piano which was obviously a mistake, but I think little things like that are easier to correct, I need to focus more on things like asking rhetorical questions and speaking more clearly.
Although I made my fair share of mistakes there were some strong points in my lesson. To begin with, I think I really had good enthusiasm and overall leadership. Watching the video it did make me cringe quite a bit because it looked so cheesy seeing as though my audience was a group of college students, but when working with younger children the tone , facial expression, and overall enthusiasm is extremely important. I seemed really excited about the lesson and hopefully they would to as a result. I was also able to incorporate some dancing and moving around, as well as allowing the students to come up with their own ideas, so I feel that was a strong point. I was able to improvise because there weren’t enough partners which I wasn’t planning to do so that showed flexibility. The plan was well prepared, so that was a positive. There were several things that I was proud of while I watched the lesson, so I do think it went really well.
There are quite a few things I would improve if I had the opportunity to do the lesson again. I would slow things down a bit more and make sure I was more confident in what I was doing, which would help me be more clear and make fewer mistakes. Practice makes perfect, but I know that no matter how many times I rehearse something there are always going to be errors, it is just important to work with them at that point and improve as a result of them. One thing I did that drove me nuts later on was say funner something like that, which was just a total incorrect use of the English language. It is little mistakes like that I really have to watch out for because it makes me look really bad as a teacher, it was as if it took away some of my credibility or something. I’d also have a bit more dancing and movement and just try to be more confident!
If I were to have to grade myself it would be something like this…
Musicianship… 5 points
I may not have had the very best voice, but it was generally in key and used in the head voice, and that is what is important for this class. I sang with them as well as played the piano at parts so they got a better understanding of the melody, and everything was done with appropriate tempo and rhythm.
Leadership… 9 points
Out of all the different categories I would say this is the one I excelled in, however, I showed my nerves a bit too much which shouldn’t have been done. There are still certain things I need to improve on to gain confidence, but intensity, eye contact, voice tone and volume all seemed to be there.
Preparation… 14
The written plan and knowledge of music and plan were also things I was very prepared in. However, I could have used more instruments like the hand drums or rhythmic sticks which would have been more fun and just planned things out a bit better to make things go more smoothly.
Delivery of Instruction… 18
This would be an 18 because of all the reasons I had talked about before. I asked far too many rhetorical questions and was not clear enough about what I wanted at several different times. The transitions could have gone better as well. I do think that flexibility went well, as well as the pace, so those are some of the things I should continue to do.

Week 5

This week we learned many new and interesting things. Starting on Monday we began going over the teaching criteria for our lesson plans and what we needed to specifically do for them. Some of the things we learned that were important in teaching each lesson was Musicianship, which includes being in tune and having accurate rhythm, Leadership, which involves our body language, eye contact, and intensity, Preparation, which is basically having our lesson plans figured out and knowing exactly what we are going to do, which we worked on last week, and the Delivery of Instruction. We learned great deal of things under the delivery of instruction category, such as important aspects of closure, continuity, feedback, and verbal instructions. Going over each aspect was extremely helpful because it showed us how to get our ideas and lessons prepared and organized, because we now know exactly what is expected of us and how we should do it. On Wednesday we discussed Zoltan Kodaly, his importance, and many of the musical concepts he brought into play. We went over “do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do” and different hand motions and levels that you can use to show that note. It was interesting, but probably one of the harder things we have learned so far because everything to me was new.
We learned these concepts and skills several different ways. For lesson preparation, knowing what is expected of us, and getting things more organized and ready for this week’s lesson we were given a worksheet outlining these things and we went over them. As we did this if anyone had any questions about anything in specific or in general they were given an opportunity to ask about them. This was nice because a lot of questions other people asked I was wondering myself but was too embarrassed to ask. We all were able to help each other out and give one another tips. For the Kodlay martial we started off by listening to the Sound of Music so we could hear and know what he concentrated on. We were shown the different hand motions and repeated them. We also went through the packet, having the teaching read and point out the important parts of it and taking note on it.
Lesson planning is probably the most important thing for us to go over because the large majority of us are not going to be music teachers, but will use these same concepts. It is nice to know what we need to do and how to get organized for it. The Kodlay material was important because he had the philosophy that music should be the core of education for all children, so it puts the idea in our heads of incorporating more music into the general education setting. Ideas like hand signing and solfa can be very helpful to children and we should know them.
While children will not know the importance or difficulty that goes into lesson planning, the Kodlay material is very important for them to know. It will help them grasp a greater understanding of music, so the younger they begin to learn it at the better. The hand motions may be hard to pick up at first, but will be very beneficial.

Week 4

Yet another week has come to a close, and we have continued to refresh the skills and concepts already taught to us, as well as adding in new information. One of the more exciting things we worked on this week was lesson planning and how to present and form our own lessons. Musicially we learned a few new skills, including rests and rhythmic pattern. Rhythmic pattern was also taught to us during the song "Ti De Oh", which was a fun way to learn because we got a chance to move around, learning not only through psychomotor funcations, but cognitive as well. On Friday we learned a new note, C, on the recorder. Although it was only one new note we were able to enhance our recorder skills greatly and play even more songs than we usually do.

Lesson planning was shown in a variety of ways. During class the instructor had a few lessons she presented to us as though we were younger children so we could pick up what she was doing. We discussed what we were doing, what concepts we were working on, and different ways to teach it during the presentation. We also looked on the written lesson plan format we had to fill in what was being done so we understood it more. To learn about rests we first did clapping and then a song for "Bow Wow Wow" and we made sure to incorporate a rest space into our dance and clapping. The rest signs were also given on the board so that we knew what they were supposed to look like and could identify them in our music. During the song Ti De Oh we moved around a lot and did a fun dance which most of us enjoyed to learn the rhythmic pattern. We played several new songs on Friday with our recorders. In almost everything we listened to the music first, repeated it, and added in new skills afterwards, such as the dancing or clapping. This week we were also able to have a great deal more discussion than usual, mostly concerning the lesson plans; however, it was nice to get a chance to ask questions and interact with the class.

While it is important to learn all of these concepts and skills for varoius reasons, I think one of the most useful thing that we did this week was to work on lesson plans. Although our official lesson plan isn't due until next week, working on it was a great opportunity. All of us are going to need to know how to make lesson plans, and in many of our classes we really haven't been given that chance yet, and even if we have it may not have been so specific or incorporated so many things, so it is great practice. This is one of the things we are going to need to know how to do no matter what, and even though we may not be making music lessons in the future they will be similar to what we are doing now. It is a great skill to pick up, so I'm very glad we are doing it. It is also important for us to learn about rests and silent beats because when talking about steady beat and rhythm we have realized that there were going to be rests, but haven't been showig them.

For children it is important to know about rests because without them they could get the entire rhythm and beat of a song incorrect. They need to know how to pause at certain parts and incorporate silence into their music, so it is a good skill and concept to know. Also, the different clapping and stomping is good for children because it will help them with their coordination, something that is very important for children to learn but often gets ignored. Like last week, the recorder is important to teach at a young age because they will just pick up on it so much better than many adults do, so the younger we start children in music the more they will comprehend.

Week 3

We have finished the third week, during which we not only reviewed the concepts, but also went over a few new things. The concepts that we reviewed was rhythm and steady beat, which we started to go over last week, but it was expanded on. We also discussed melody, which is a combination of various pitches, either high, low, or the same pitch. We learned the song Bee Bee Bumble Bee to work with melody and we walked on the steady beat, so it helped us understand both of these concepts. We also learned about musical notes, the treble clef which is also called G clef in western music, and that lined notes are EGBDF and spaces are FACE. Music on the recorder is in treble clef. Also, we went over note value
One of the ways that we were taught about these different concepts was listening to a song, double double ice cream, where we clapped hands with a partner to get a better grasp of steady beat, which had 4 beats per line, and rhythm. We wrote out x's, larger ones that had more value, to learn rhythm. We also did this with pictures for a song called rain and our name rhyme. To get kids to understand note length they can comprehend the rhythm more with X's and pictures, with larger pictures for longer notes, so we went over that. In the ice cream song we also went over the patterns found in music. Note value was explained to us by using the example of a loaf of bread, and breaking it up to understand how much each is worth. On Friday we worked on the GAB notes on our recorder and made up our own song to help us learn.
Melody was important for us to learn because it make up the basis of songs, so it is one of the basic concepts we really need to know. Also, kids tend to sing on a higher pitch depending on the age level, so melody comes into play with that. The treble clef and notes are important for us to know because in order to understand what pitch to hit and whether or not your voice is supposed to go higher or lower there has to be an understanding of the scale. Because children learn things so much better in songs, it is important that we continue to learn more of these and different ways to incorporate the methods in our classroom, which is what we did this week.
The reason why it's important for children to learn these things is because they have probablly been using different musical skills and concepts without realizing it, but it's important they actually know the definitions and how it came about. Also, if they learn notes and how to read music at a younger age it will be much easier for them in the future, and the will understand music much better.