This was my first-time teaching in front of this class, and I think it went relatively

smoothly. I think adding kinesthetic elements to the warm ups, such as pointing the sound

forward on the “eee” vowel worked well for their sound. When teaching the new warm up,

with 2 parts, they picked up on it very quickly. I think I could have made it even harder for them

and had them sing different voice parts every other row instead of two halves of the room.

When doing solfege echoes, it may be useful to go back to the piano to find “do” again because

this particular class has a tendency to go very sharp. It is also good to reestablish “do” if they do

their sight-singing a second time.

To start the new piece, I showed let them listen to a video of the arrangement, and I

think it helped them conceptualize the overall feel of the song. When planning for this lesson, I

was slightly ambitious on the 6th graders knowledge of solfege. While it is used in the class very

frequently, they are still building that skill. They are still practicing associating pitches with hand

signs and music literacy. In this lesson, they were starting a brand-new piece and I wanted to

introduce it on solfege. I had to give them extra time to write in their solfege on the first 2

pages, and it would probably take a few lessons for them to internalize the solfege in this

section. It was taking the 6th graders a minute to figure out the solfege for larger sections.

However, after introducing it on solfege, they did pretty well with their transition to text. I had

to go over a few tricky spots and revert back to solfege.

One thing I wish I had done is have them sing it acapella once through towards the end.

Even if the notes were not perfect, it would have made them focus and listen to what was

happening in the song. It would also help me hear any issues they were having. I would also
have them circle the parts that are in unison because many students were trying to add

harmonies. This was a trouble section for them. In the future, I would have them hold out each

chord change acapella until they got to the unison part. There are also some points in the

lesson where I just need to project my voice more when speaking. I also have the tendency to

always try to sing over my piano playing when it would be more helpful to just sing or solely

play the piano.

I think I have improved on giving breath entrances to the choir so that they knew when

to come in. The piece is in cut time, so further along reviewing time signatures would be a great

thing to tie into this piece. They understand the idea of cut time, but this song can help them

understand it visually and aurally. Overall, I think I managed the class time well and am proud of

the students for remaining focused and singing after they had just found out they would be out

of school for a while. There was a lot of energy in the room and it was put to use in their

singing. I have also realized that it is much easier teaching students that you know relatively

well. It is easier to predict what they may have trouble with and their strengths are. There are

so many wonderful choir directors that come in as a guest for a district chorus event and are

prepared to quickly make changes and adapt to the choirs needs. It makes me understand the

importance of planning for adaptations as well as being flexible.