Student teaching 11/29/2012

11/29/2012

This morning’s extension time full of fifth graders I covered it for a while since Mrs. P.G. went to pick up the class. Although they were advanced students, it didn’t mean they would help set up the chairs actively without teacher’s request. When Mrs. P.G. was leaving, only one girl came. It meant I needed to lead them to do warm-up and sing when other students come. I asked first coming students to set up the chairs for other students. And the reward was they could play any instrument for several minutes. Then they needed to go back to chairs and started to do warm-up with me. I didn’t follow Mrs. P.G. warm-up method. Then I taught them the new song, which was Hanukkah is coming. Since they only had lyrics, they failed to differentiate the melodies between phrase no.3 to phrase no. 6, although they really liked the song. Since students knew I was a student teacher, sometimes the solo kid and other boys tried to ignore my instructions and started to talk. I pointed them out and let them sing individually. If they sang it right, I definitely gave them a big compliment. If they failed to sing it well, they knew it and also behaved better when I taught them how to sing it. In this way, I not only resolved the behavior issues and built my authority, but also assessed how much and how well they learned.  For that annoying melody problem, Mrs. P.G. helped me out by doing solfeggio. Instead of singing the words, students only sang the notes names with corresponding hand gestures. After practicing several times, this annoying problem fixed. I figured out I could try other possible methods by deconstructing these music elements when repetition cannot resolve the problem. Then overcome small problems one by one.