Video Reflection 1: Body Language

Date of recording: 1/10

Time of recording: 8:50am
Other information (e.g., grade, class, number of students, etc.):
High School Grades 9-12
1st period
55 Students
1. Turn off the sound for your video and watch your lesson in silence.
2. Describe your body language throughout the lesson. What gestures are you using? What is your
facial expression(s) communicating? Do you look relaxed or tense? Open or closed? Are you
making eye contact with students? What might your body language communicating as you teach?
Pulling my hands up into position to start conducting, it’s not very confident looking so I think that’s why
it took the ensemble awhile to have their instruments up ready to play. It also takes me two or three
seconds to move my hands into the correct position. I feel like I need to set my hands up, make eye
contact with the students and then go. I am loosing them the longer I stand up there and hold my hands in
position.
As I am conducting, it looks like I am just keeping tempo which was my goal for the first rehearsal with
this piece but I could do more than just conduct. My eyes are looking down at the music 80% of the time
so I need to use more eye contact with the students. When I do look up, I don’t use any sort of expression
so I am just dead glare staring at them which makes sense why I was getting back so many glazed over
looks.
When I cut off the ensemble, I am just throwing my arm up there to get them to stop while I could give a
big cut off, keep my eyes up at them, and then look down. I think they need a second of silence or a
second to cut off before I begin talking. If I just go straight into talking, they will miss the beginning of
my instruction and that is not productive because it adds more time to my lesson.
The ensemble was having problems coming in and attacking together so I need to breath with them in
time where I would like them to breath so they have a more confident entrance. My breath needs to be big
enough that the students in the back are able to see it.
As I am listening to students ask questions and as I am talking, I fiddle with my baton and move my
hands around too much and I feel like it is distracting for the students.
My left hand isn’t doing much while I conduct.
3. On the back of this page, reflect on the impact that your body language might have on
instruction (positively or negatively). If you noticed any body language or nonverbal habits you
might like to change, discuss how you will go about addressing these issues.
I think only having my right arm up conducting, it makes me seem less confident in front of the ensemble.
As I conduct, I need to include my left hand to show them musicality and to encourage their sound.
As I breath before we begin playing, I am going to focus on a bigger breath and more confident arms on
the up beat before we play so the students feel more confident coming in.
My fidgeting while I am talking or listening to the students answer questions could be avoided by setting
down my baton as soon as we stop playing so I can force myself to not mess with anything in my hands.
When I set my hands into position to begin conducting, I will focus on setting up, making eye contact,
breathing with them and keeping my eyes up for a few seconds before I look down at my music.
I will also try working on keeping more eye contact. When I make eye contact, I need to look at everyone
throughout the room. Looking past the second row is something I have struggled with so I need to keep
looking all the way back to the percussion section.
Video Reflection 2: Verbal Communication
Date of recording: 1-25
Time of recording: 8:45
Other information (e.g., grade, class, number of students, etc.):
High School Band
52 students
First class of the day

1. Watch your video and describe your verbal communication in the following areas (use the front
and back of this page as necessary):
a. Speed/pace of delivery: are you talking too slowly, too fast, etc.? The thing I struggle with the
most with delivery is I have my hands up ready to start conducting while I am still giving
instruction or I don’t wait for them to stop playing/ talking until I begin instruction. Everytime we
are about to start playing again, I ask “ready?”. Maybe a better thing to say would be “here we
go” or just say the measure number and hold my arms up.
b. Volume: are you talking too loud, too soft, all one dynamic level, etc.? I am talking at a pretty
decent level. I have been struggling for a while to project to the back of the room. This lesson is
the best one I have seen so far with projection.
c. Choice of vocabulary: are the words being used at the students’ level of comprehension?
When I cut off the ensemble, I always say “ok” or “good!”. I need to change these habits because
most of the time it is not good.
d. Clarity of thought: is it easy to understand what you are saying? I do not fully understand
what I am saying when I begin speaking right after I cut off.
e. Balance between verbal and nonverbal communication (gestures, facial expression, etc.):
are you talking too much, too little, etc.? I talk way too much. I can tell this because the
ensemble loses focus while I’m talking and they aren’t ready to come in when we begin playing
as a full ensemble. I am starting to point at my ear to tell them to listen to each other and it has
been helping them instead of stopping and telling them to listen.
f. Enunciation and inflection When I count off with the ensemble and they come in on beat 4 and I
emphasize beat 3, they usually come in together better than if I don’t emphasize that beat.
g. Feedback given to students: are you being specific? Are you being honest? I need to be more
specific about what I am hearing. There are spots where the students are not playing well and I
tell them to use more air, but I need to tell them how, and explain to them how to breath.
Video Reflection 3: Classroom Management
Date of recording: Wednesday 2/14
Time of recording: 1:30 pm
Other information (e.g., grade, class, number of students, etc.):
5th grade woodwinds
29 students

1. Watch your video and describe your strategies for classroom management (effective or
otherwise) including:
a. How you redirect off-task behavior.
b. How you address students directly when they are off-task and/or distracting others from
learning.
c. What are the causes for students being on or off-task and/or distracting others?
Throughout my entire lesson I noticed that it went smoothly and classroom management wasn’t bad when
I was able to pace my teaching and the students were constantly, counting, singing playing, and just
actively being engaged in the learning process.
There were a few times during the counting section at the beginning that students weren’t engaged with
tapping their toes and it was affecting how quickly we were getting the counting down. If I were more
aware of this, I could have addressed them tapping their toe and we could have moved more quickly
through that.
There are a few students who played out of turn, whether it was while I was giving instruction or while I
was helping a specific student/ section. The only thing I needed to do was ask them to stop playing and
they stopped.
I had a small question/ answer section in the middle of my lesson and I took too long on it because the
last 30 seconds to a minute of it, the students were starting to become more talkative and not as focused.
One student was getting impatient with the process of learning a new line and was asking if we could do
different things so I looked at him and said “you are just getting a little ahead of me” and he calmed down
and waited.
I taught a new concept of the “natural sign” and it took awhile for them to understand the concept. I
shouldn’t have let all the questions keep coming. We should have just played it right after I explained it so
the students could use trial and error to figure it out. This took a lot of time and made a lot of student go
out of focus.
2. Scan through your video one more time, this time drawing a proximity map below for every time
you moved throughout the lesson.
00:10- 2:40 Moved around entire room as students are getting instruments/ music out before class starts.
3:00 walked behind sections as we count- stayed behind saxophones the majority of the time
5:30 moved to the front of the room to point at the board as they count
6:10 moved back behind the saxophones
8:15 back up to the front
10:30 started to move out from behind my podium and walked in front of the sections across the room.
14:00 moved behind the flutes- only there for 15 seconds and then moved to the front to play
Stayed behind my podium the majority of the rest of the lesson.
Video Reflection 4: Musicality 1
Date of recording:1/29/2018
Time of recording:8:45am
Other information (e.g., grade, class, number of students, etc.):
52 students
High School Band

1. Watch your video and describe the musicality of your teaching.

Statements I make:
Warm sound from low clarinets
My conducting is not in the style that I want the students to play in. I am beating the tempo instead of the
music.
I need to breath with the ensemble so they can know the size of breath they need to take. This will also
help them breath better together and attack together.
Tuning the clarinets, I have them fix their intonation based on a tuner rather than having them produce a
full sound and listen to the people sitting next to them.
When talking about dynamics- “a little bit more with this crescendo”- but what does that mean?
“The dynamics comes from the lows”- I don’t think anyone understood what I meant by that
My cut offs are very choppy and not clear- the students will not play and cut off clearly if I don’t.

2. Watch your video and describe the musicality of your students’ performance.
The students are not cutting off together
The core sound once the ensemble has their pitch set sounds good and warm
There are some intonation issues in the middle voices
When I ask the ensemble to listen to their neighbors and fix their intonation, they don’t adjust at all.
Video Reflection Summary #1
1. Summarize any issues you discovered by watching the first three videos.
I have learned that I have issues with presenting myself as an authoritative figure in front of the class. I
am told that I am being “too nice” or that I need to raise my voice.
From watching videos I realize that part of this issue comes from the fact that I stand behind the podium a
lot and use it as my safe space. The students can sense that I am nervous by my body language so they
don’t give me the respect they would give another teacher.
I also learned that I talk entirely too much and I do not allow as much time for the students to be actively
engaged with counting or playing. I think this is coming from a place of me wanting them to be musical
but I cannot expect that from them until they are playing the correct notes and rhythms.
Video Reflection 5: Pacing
Date of recording:1/22/2018
Time of recording: 1:30pm
Other information (e.g., grade, class, number of students, etc.):
32 students
5th Grade Woodwinds
This class happens right after lunch/ recess.

1. Watch your video and describe the pacing of the lesson. Also reflect on how pacing may impact
effectiveness of instruction and contribute to/detract from the level of student engagement.
The students have 2:45 minutes to get out their instruments at the beginning of class.
Once instruments are out, we spend 4 minutes counting a rhythm chart.
Moving onto the book, I have a few numbers out of the book that I plan to get through.
A student had an issue making a sound on their instrument so I addressed it by walking over to her while
the rest of the class didn’t have a task. For pacing/ time considerations I should have had the students play
through the song again while I was working with the students instrument.
The first number (55) in the book was worked on for (9:30-11:40) 2 minutes and we moved on to the next
number.
#56- (12:00- 13:50) We played through this number twice.
#57- (13:50- 22:20 ) I had them pair up and write where they will ta in the music- this lasted 3 minutes.
This made the students be engaged with their brain of knowing when to ta before we read the number.
#58- (22:20- 27:24) I had students rate how they played individually and as a group. Played it again and
asked how much it got better.
#60- (27:24- 41:57) The students filled in the missing notes as homework so I had them fill it out on the
board and play it as a section. This took a lot longer because we went through every section.
#61- (41:57- 46:51)
Throughout each of the numbers I did the process with them of counting, taing, finger playing and saying,
and playing it. This process keeps the students engaged throughout the entire class period.
Video Reflection 6: Musicality 2
Date of recording:1/19/2018
Time of recording:8:30am
Other information (e.g., grade, class, number of students, etc.):
High School Woodwind Sectional
21 students

1. Watch your video and describe the musicality of your teaching.

We practiced creating the correct sitting posture for the first part of the lesson.
I had the students play a passage-- went to the board to show them how their dynamics/ phrasing sounded
to me with writing a straight line.
I asked the students what it meant to see if they knew what I was getting at.
Once they explain the straight line to me, I ask them how they think we should shape the line.
As we played it again I showed them with my conducting how they want the phrase shaped.
At the end of the piece, I keep my hands up for a couple seconds so we don’t just end the piece and put
our instruments down quickly. It will make it less abrupt of an ending and show the audience that you
care about the piece.
I made the comment “you are playing like soy milk- play more with a whole milk sound”.
I used a visual idea to help the students imagine how the music would look/ sound like.

2. Watch your video and describe the musicality of your students’ performance.
The students knew what I was talking about with phrasing and making a passage musical, I just had to
remind them in order for them to do it.
Students began playing more musical and followed my gestures with phrasing.
We had many intonation problems and once students focused on a whole milk sound, they sounded more
full with their sound.
When the ensemble breaths together, they play well together but when they don’t, they don’t attack
together.
Students make musical decisions with dynamics transferred from a piece we rehearsed earlier.