Allison Grant

Final Reflection
Practicum in Elementary Choir

1. How did I create a positive environment for my students?

Throughout my teaching, I created a positive learning environment by promoting motivation

and self-determination in the students through encouragement. In my classroom setting, I
provided positive and inclusive opportunities for students to perform and demonstrate and
expand upon their musical knowledge (NAEYC DAP Principles, 2016). An example of this can
be seen in my lesson (3/13/17) during the remedial help section. The students expressed
frustration and had low evaluation scores in tonal memory, pitch accuracy, and listening skills.
To set a precedent for an inclusive and welcome environment, I verbally assured the students
that they would not be singing alone and that the work was not a test. In this lesson, I also
encouraged student involvement and active participation by providing exercises that were
accessible yet challenging. For example, the tonal memory section of this lesson increased in
difficulty with each pitch added to adhere to all learning levels present. Students match pitch
more accurately using 3-4 pitches in a pattern as opposed to single pitches or lines more than
5-6 pitches long (Phillips, 2014). The pitch patterns used here were 34 pitches rather than one
pitch to provide accessible patterns for the student. By providing short achievable patterns, the
students were much more successful in demonstrating their tonal memory in comparison to their
original evaluations, thus promoting motivation and self- determination through a successful
experience.
I also displayed created a positive learning environment through encouragement by giving
the students a questionnaire in which they were able to better express their interests and
opinions in regard to music and learning. In this survey, a few students expressed frustration
with choir and singing. With this information, we were able to better understand our students
dispositions toward learning and therefore were able to establish a better rapport with our
students (Campbell, 2010). For example, a student Kasey expressed frustration with singing
and stated I cant sing. Based on her questionnaire, I asked Karley questions about how she
felt including why she didnt enjoy choir and how we could help make her feel more comfortable.
She responded by saying she would feel more comfortable if I would sing the exercises with
her. I also encouraged her with phrases like you can do it! and smiling when she tried to sing.
By asking the student about their comfort levels and varying my instruction to do so, the student
felt more comfortable and encouraged to try singing again shown in the rest of the lesson where
she tried to sing, although not always successful. As a result of the positive environment I
created through encouragement, the students were much more active in singing during class
time and less afraid to speak out in class. For example, later in the semester these individuals
volunteered to participate in our research and speaking roles for the informance. Their
increased confidence was also noticed when students were separated into three groups to sing
the melody of When Jesus Wept and the students showed leadership and confidence in their
singing and compliments to the other groups performances.
2. Engaging student learning
In my teaching, I engage students in learning through a variety of learning methods that
further develop their musical skills, musical knowledge, and contextual understandings (NAfME,
2016). In my lesson (4/10/17), I engaged students in learning through a competition to see
which group could demonstrate the best vocal technique in the piece When Jesus Wept. I first
drew upon student prior knowledge by asking the students to define or describe certain key
elements of vocal technique and pedagogy, as discussed earlier in the year. Through the
application of these technical skills, the students were able to place their prior knowledge into
context, in order to expand upon their current musical knowledge. This supports the Deweys
principle that student learning is effective when past and present experiences are connected
(Dewey, 1938). Students then responded to each others singing by giving positive feedback
using the vocabulary discussed. By discussing the musical skills and having students share
their prior knowledge, the students were able to make connections between the concepts,
perform these concepts, and finally aurally connect these concepts to the other groups
performances. The aspect of competition between the three groups also engaged students, in
that they wanted to perform their best and utilize the feedback of other groups in their
performance of the piece. By comparing and contrasting performances, the students used
critical listening to connect their musical skills and knowledge to the other groups
performances, thus creating a contextual understanding. Upon evaluation of each groups final
performances, their progress/contextual understanding became evident. This is evident in their
singing before and after this lesson. Before this lesson students were not confident in their
singing and lacked focus, breath support, and vowel alignment. After this competition each
group was able to perform the melody alone with their best supported and focused sound
eventually used in a round when performing this piece. The process exemplified throughout this
lesson follows the Phillips hierarchy of learning by first energizing the voice as students
practiced and learned these musical skills, and then energizing the song by applying these skills
to their piece (Phillips, 2014).

3. Deepening students understanding

By making connections and using visual, auditory, and kinesthetic representation in this
lesson, student understanding was deepened through performing and responding (NAfME,
2016). In my teaching, I was able to deepen student understanding by providing connection
between a melody they already knew and a visual representation of that melody (3/20/17). The
Chester Cheetah warm-up was used throughout the semester to introduce melodic motion and
eventually used to instruct their peers the process of singing. When we first taught this warm-up
the students struggled with the pitch direction change in the melodic line. To deepen the
students understanding of this exercise, I used the melody out of context and applied the
Curwen hand signs. The Curwen hand signs provide visualization in space of the relationship
between pitches being sung (Kodaly, 1974). Using visualization of the melody with the hand
signs, students learned the melody in small fragments, beginning with just Do-mi-re-fa, and
sang the fragment in response using the solfege and hand signs, and then adding the next
solfege each time. The hand signs provided another opportunity to deepen understanding of all
learners with a visual representation, kinesthetic representation, and auditory representation
through my singing. By accommodating for all learners, students were able to perform the
melody by following the hand signs for pitch direction. To continue to deepen their
understanding, I asked students to identify the melody as a problem-solving experience to
demonstrate their musical ideas in context (Wiggins, 2001). With their deeper understanding of
the melody, students were able to identify it as Chester Cheetah. After this lesson, the students
were able to correctly and confidently perform Chester Cheetah in every lesson from the
connections made through melodic fragments and reaching visual, kinesthetic and auditory
learners.

Throughout this semester of teaching I have learned about and applied in my teaching,
techniques and knowledge from pedagogues. These experiences have helped me improve
significantly as a teacher specifically improving in student driven learning and varying instruction
for all students. As the semester progressed, my teaching became much more student driven
and centered. In a lesson on February 27th, I asked a few open-ended questions about the
familiar piece Dont Stop Believin and ran-through the piece to get them excited. This learning
here was much less student centered as we just sang the piece and I didnt allow the students
to explore or recall their prior knowledge of the piece except through singing. In a more recent
lesson however, when we held a small competition of vocal technique and singing When Jesus
Wept the learning was much more student driven. I began by asking them what made beautiful
singing to them and allowed them to brainstorm answers and decide what to listen for in the
other groups. I also allowed them to connect their work to singing when it was each of their
groups turns to sing. In another recent lesson, I improved in making a student driven lesson
during the remedial help sessions. In one exercise, we allowed them to sing any pitch and I
would sing either the same or different note for them to decide if it was a higher, lower, or the
same pitch. Allowing the students to choose a pitch gives them a comfortable opportunity to
begin the exercise while practicing their listening skills and pitch identification. Another student-
driven lesson was my deepening lesson of Chester Cheetah. Once the solfege and melodic
fragments were well understood by the students, the teaching was student driven as the
students gave several ideas to what the melody was connected to including answers like a
major scale and the identification of the Chester Cheetah melody when a student sang it back
to me. In these lessons I have improved, and will continue to improve, in creating student-driven
learning as a part of my teaching.

I have also improved a lot in varying student instruction to meet the needs of all students
in the classroom. At first when teaching, it was hard to hear errors and address them in the
classroom for an accurate answer or performance from all students. For example, in my first
lesson when we sang through Dont Stop Believin, I allowed students to make many errors
and did not vary my instruction for the students who did not sing this piece prior. Although the
goal of this lesson was to allow the students to demonstrate their prior knowledge of this song, I
could have varied the instruction to give the students unfamiliar with the piece, a fair chance at
practicing the piece. Later in the semester however, I was able to vary my instruction in several
circumstances. When doing group work in When Jesus Wept, I varied and changed the groups
slightly in class time do to Nicks recent vocal change. He was originally placed in a group with
unchanged voices but when we arrived to class and saw that he was struggling with octave
displacement, we moved him to the group with other changed voices to help him hear where his
new voice can access. In this example I carried my instruction by changing previously planned
grouping to fit the needs of this student. Another example where my teaching was varied to fit
the needs of all the students was present when teaching tone production and vowel alignment
on April 3rd. When I first had the students attempt to match each other, several of boys in the
back row still were producing a harsh and blatty sound. After another approach of explaining the
jaw and yawning sensation, a few more of these students adjusted their sound and were able to
phonate in a healthy and appropriate manner. Here, I varied my instruction and explained the
concepts in a different way in hopes of more students being able to connect to the information.
These two large improvements in my teaching demonstrate my growth in knowledge and
practice by teaching this semester. From this I believe I deserve a 4.0 for this semesters work.
On top of these two large improvements in my teaching, I was always prepared and prepared a
lot of the work on our group lesson plans and my own personal reflections. I put in immense
efforts to better my teaching this semester and I intend to continue this work when teaching next
semester and though to student teaching. I have learned a great deal in this course and I thank
you very much for helping me grow as an educator this semester.
 Bibliography

Campbell, M. R., Thompson, L. K., & Barrett, J. R. (2011). Constructing a Personal Orientation

to Music Teaching. New York: Routledge.

Choksy, L. (1998). Kodaly method. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Phillips, K. H. (2014). Teaching kids to sing. Boston, MA: Schirmer.

Wiggins, J. (2015). Teaching for musical understanding: teaching music with a social

constructivist vision of learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.http://www.nafme.org/

10 Effective DAP Teaching Strategies. (n.d.). Retrieved May 10, 2017, from

http://www.naeyc.org/dap/10-effective-dap-teaching-strategies

2014 Music Standards. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.nafme.org/