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.