Reflection #2

At the beginning of this lesson, I asked the class if they knew what the word dynamics
meant. One student raised her hand and told me the correct answer, it means the volume level of
the music. This acted as a pre assessment question, even though only one student answered. She
was the only student to raise her hand, leading me to believe that the majority of the class did not
know the answer.
I wrote the abbreviations for 6 dynamic markings on the board: pp, p, mp, mf, f, ff,
standing for pianissimo, piano, mezzo piano, mezzo forte, forte, and fortissimo respectively. The
words are Italian, so we talked about why they are written in Italian as opposed to having the
English meaning written in their music. At that, we went over the English meaning of these
words so that they could put the two together and understand what the abbreviations mean in
their music. After going over the meanings, we talked about crescendos and decrescendos and
how they can do a crescendo or decrescendo to or from any of the markings to another.
After going over all the meanings of our new terms, I asked the students to get their
music out and we went through it as a class and talked about each of the dynamic markings in
the music that they are actually singing. I felt that this was important because they were already
working on the pitches to the new piece and I was adding to new material and making them think
about all of what they had already learned while putting it together with what I was teaching
them. I feel like I gave a good amount of wait time for the students to identify the dynamic
markings and interpret their meanings within the music. We went through a few pages so that I
felt comfortable in knowing that the students knew what the abbreviations mean.
Next, I had the students sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat as a class at different dynamic
levels. I felt that this was appropriate because it is a song that everyone knows and didnt require

the students to think too hard about pitches or words, but allowed them to really focus on the
dynamics that I asked them to sing. We started off singing pianissimo, and then sang it at forte. I
then asked them to start at forte and decrescendo to pianissimo while singing the phrase and then
reversed it and asked them to sing pianissimo and crescendo to forte. This addressed many
things. It helped me to see if the students understood the terminology that I was addressing as
well as being able to see if they could not only identify what I wanted them to, but to
demonstrate it as well. I consider this to be the during assessment activity. The students did a
great job in this activity!
Finally, I gave the students a handout that had two sections. The first section asked them
to put the dynamic abbreviations in order from softest to loudest, and then from loudest to
softest. The second section gave each Italian name and asked for the English definition. This was
used as my post assessment. It showed me whether or not the students understood the factual
knowledge about this lesson. Out of 44 students that day, 42 made As on the handout, 1 made a
D and 1 made an F. So, ninety five percent of the class mastered the skill that I proposed for this
lesson.
During our warm up time, we did a warm up that focuses on vowels and while doing that
warm up, which they had learned prior to this lesson, I asked them to add in dynamics as they
sang that particular warm up that day. I was very impressed at how well the students did with
this and I was proud of myself for the improvement made from the previous lesson I taught.