Robert Young Student Teaching

My goal was this week was to get students to get all students at least attempting to understand the five finger hand position for the right hand and also to memorize all 125 students names. This week was a lot of individual help. The students tested on their first piano assignment. Most of the students have never played the piano before so the first assignment was difficult for them. Also, it is probably the most important lessons because it sets the student up with the five-finger hand position for the right hand. I am sort of used to doing individual help but when you have so many students I am constantly busy. One thing I realize is how every student is different and how every student has different needs.  For example, there is one student who is very interested in piano but does not want to play the assignment. So in order to compromise with the student, I show her a little bit of a song like Beethovens "Fur Elise" and ask her to then play the first line of the assignment...

This week I pretty much took over the entire class. There are some sections that my cooperating teacher co-teaches. On Monday I got to experience what a district music meeting was like. We met up with my cooperating teachers boss and the other music teachers in the district. It was really interesting to see the work that goes into creating a cohesive plan for the semester. I found many technological resources for music education. It was also interesting to see how teachers acted as a team. They all brought unique ideas to the table and advice for each other. They went on to make this slide full of resources for teachers to use so it was all in one place if they ever needed anything. I thought this was a really smart idea and would be extremely helpful to use. We started on pianos and split all students into "A" and "B" groups because there are not enough keyboards for the entire class. When the kids entered the class and seen the keyboards their faces lit up. They w...

Week three of student teaching has been highly educational. I've been teaching lessons on rhythm and rhythm notation throughout the week, I have been leading the daily listening and my cooperating teacher has given me some great advice. The biggest takeaway from week three was time management. I now set a timer for all the classwork we do. This gives students an idea of how fast they should accomplish the task and also for me knowing when everyone should be moving on. Another thing I realized is because I have "A" and "B" days in block schedule there is a lot of students I see during the week (125 to be exact) and it is hard to remember all of their names. But this week I have been literally repeating their names over and over and calling every single student by their name as much as possible. When student realize that you know their name without looking at the seating chart they seem to try harder. I'm not 100% on everyone yet but I'm pretty close. my g...