In teaching music,
there is so much ground to cover in such a short amount of
time that it can be a bit overwhelming. I constantly
find myself taking what I have learned in theory, history and
making it student friendly. I like to use a variety of
resources in teaching to give my students wonderful
opportunites to experience and learn about music. I will
never be the type of educator that starts on page 1 and
teaches every lesson in order until the class it to the end of
the book. The wonderful part of music education is that
there are excellent resources available to music
teachers. Resource list for
student teaching
Music is not passive, it is
active and something that music be experienced. I
believe in giving students many different experiences to help
them connect with and make music. The music classroom is
always an adventure. Toward the end of student teaching,
I taught a unit on African drumming. I dressed in
African clothing and shared with the students about the Maasai
people of Kenya. We learned songs by rote because the
Maasai people teach music to their children by rote. We
made an African drumming circle where students created new
accompaniments and had opportunities to improvise on their
drums.
African Drumming Lesson
Plans for Grade 1 and Grade 2
African
Drumming Lesson Plans for Grade 4 and 5
Pictures
of the Maasai People of Kenya
Pictures
of the African Drumming Unit
Each lesson plan has several
parts the primary concpet, other musical conpects to be
addressed in the future, materials, behavioral objectives,
assessment strategies, introduction, procedure, closure,
National Standards, and experiences of music. During
student teaching I used this same template for every lesson
plan.
Second grade lesson
plan
During student teaching my university
supervisor visited three times to evaluate me on my
teaching. It is always helpful to get the perspective of
another person. I am thankful that I was able to gain
some positive feedback from my supervisor and a list of areas
that still need improvement. Click on the following
links to see each of these evaluations
Evaluation
#1
Evaluation
#2
Evaluation
#3
| 
