Teaching a Song Reflection

When considering what song to teach, I thought about the age group and the language I

wanted to teach. At first, I was going to teach a childhood song of mine called “Pimpón es un

Muñeco,” but when I taught it to my class, they struggled with the Spanish. I decided to change

my song to “Sleep, Baby, Sleep” from my Orff lesson that I taught to my class. It was a simple

“mi Re do” melody and I knew that first graders would get the melody pretty quickly. When I

taught the song to first graders, I taught it by rote and the whole-part-whole method. I sang the

whole song by myself. Then I broke it up into phrases so I could teach my students. I broke the

song up into 4 sections at first but then realized that I had to break up one phrase a little more for

them to grasp the melody and the words more. I organized this lesson the same way I did my

Orff lesson. The only thing different about it is that I didn’t use the Orff instrumentation. I had an

initiation that transitioned into the song. I added student input on what they thought we should to

help the baby sleep. I also asked for student leaders to help the rest of the class with the song.

Below I will provide timestamps of different teaching moments:

a. Good Pacing: 0:58-2:33 I would say that teaching my song had really good

pacing especially when I had to repeat a phrase from the melody that was a bit

tough for my students.

b. Repetition: 1:12-2:33 Students were having trouble with one of the phrases of the

song and I had to break it up. I thought that they would have the first part of the

phrase, so I combined the two, but soon realizes that I moved on too fast.

c. Good Singing and expressivity: 0:41 I believe that I did a good job of modeling

the song for my students, the only thing I would change is how I started. I was

really nervous and the syllable “Um” came out of my mouth.

 d. Positive Reinforcement: 2:49-2:55 I asked my students for an idea for having the

baby fall asleep and they gave me a great idea!

e. Students’ Productive engagement: 4:31-5:39 I had student volunteers for my

engagement activity. I thought that a good way to have my students engage with

each other and would be more excited to sing the song.

If there were something that I would do differently is that I would have given them a

tempo for them to tap on themselves. I feel like because I didn’t give them a tempo for them

to tap, they weren’t sure where the beat was in the long phrase that I taught them. I would

also have the whole class stand up and sing, just so they wouldn’t be bored from sitting

down the whole time. I also noticed that some students were fidgeting, and I believe that

having them stand up once so they wouldn’t be moving around so much. The difference

between teaching elementary students and secondary students is that you have to adjust

your teaching to who your audience is. With middle school students, I believe that I have to

be firm and clear by the first time I give directions or else the students will not listen. With

elementary students, I feel that they are more forgiving and trust you more as the teacher. I

believe that students in elementary school listen more to directions than students in

middle school.