Ottobine Elementary Observation #3

Instructors Perspective

Keeping students organized and focused

Continued familiarity with classical music
Utilizing movement patterns/phrasing
Avoid unnecessary noise
Threatens to take away reward for good behavior
Review previous material
Play CD so students can sing along
Review specific intervals to ensure accuracy
Positive reinforcement that was better
Music related reward what does the fox say
Allow students to create rhythms
Repeat a line of rhythm- beginning form understanding
New song- listen through

Learners Perspective

Slow movements getting better, but still boring

Excited to sing song-I just want to sing!
No attention to detail-What are the words?
It doesnt matter how the song actually goes.
Listen to the rhythms so I can clap them correctly!
New song! Why dont we get to sing it?
Reward- dancing! (half the class uninterested half the class engaged and

excited)
Reading rhythms- Excited! I want to put up a rhythm!

Content/music

Quavers Rhythm video

Rhythm is a sandwich
Call and response clapping rhythms
Listen then sing and follow along with notation
Turn down music to encourage singing in the class
o Under the Tree song for holiday concert
o Parade holiday song for concert
Seating change to separate more excited learners

Milieu

Sitting in rows
Fairly clean
Focus on the smart board and video
Moved to dance once
Long class, hard to maintain student focus
Instruments off to the side not in use
Point system for good behavior , one point taken away
On better behavior because of reward
More focused today- better attention to instructions
Singing together and better on pitch
Singing with aids, no singing without recording
Excited to participate, not many opportunities to do so

Pedagogical Strategies

Movement warmup with classical music same as before(establish continuity)

Using motions to correlate with instrument sounds
Listening to recordings
Listening to teacher singing (correcting intervals and short phrases)
Rewarding good behavior (with musical reward)
Reviewing material before adding new material
Asking questions pertaining to the song (what did the mom get for a

present?)
Heart chart rhythm reading
Allowing students to create the rhythms
Starting to introduce form by repeating rhythm lines
Assigning ta and ta-ti to rhythms while clapping
Positive reinforcement when singing is done well
Negative reinforcement for off task behavior

This week she utilized more feedback, the class was more focused and doing
well and she mentioned several times that they were improving. She also
stopped to address several interval errors in the song, as well as pointed out
when students were misbehaving. I think this is important to give both negative
and positive feedback and hope to give as much feedback as possible in my
classroom in the future. A lot of the other techniques she used were done in

previous classes and I addressed in previous reflections. Something new this

week was the addition of a song, she had the class listen to it several times and
then asked questions about the song to have them think critically about it. I
found the questions to be a useful strategy to engage students but I think it
would have been more beneficial if they had gotten to learn more about the
song after instead of moving on.
Questions

Would more of the class have enjoyed the reward video had the motions

been more age appropriate?

Why not go deeper into exploring the new song? Even call and response to

include the class?

Do you plan on furthering the idea of form past repeating lines in the

heart chart or was that just to make the rhythms easier?

Could the students sing these songs without the crutches of a recording
and without you singing over them?

The focus this week was again on the holiday concert music. I enjoyed seeing the
addition of a new song but was disappointed to see that very little was done with it
and the students were hardly involved in its presentation. I really enjoyed the
reward being musical based, incorporating movements to a fun song is wonderful! I
do think that it would have been more beneficial with easier moves and if
afterwards even though its a reward it could be tied into the next topic. For
instance why not clap the rhythm of the melody while moving into the heart chart
activity? Overall, the students were better behaved and sang and focused better in
this class, it was really great to see their improvement from the first week. However,

I may just be ambitious, but I would like to see them be pushed a little harder and
not given the options of crutches like the recordings.