Taylor Meehan

Observation #2 11/25/13

Today I completed my second music observation at the Darling Elementary and Middle School in Darlington, Wisconsin. At the school, I observed a third grade class under the guidance of Mrs. Schliem. Mrs. Schliems classroom was a very large, open, and welcoming space. Just as in my last observation, you could almost instantly tell that the students were excited about music and had lots of respect for Mrs. Schliem. The entire class was quite cheerful this morning, which was probably due to the fresh snow they woke up to. The classroom was one of the biggest music rooms I had ever been in. It reminded me of my high school choir room! Despite its size, it was still very neat and organized. At the front of the room there is a storage room, a doorway that leads to practice rooms and Mrs. Schliems office. In between the storage room and practice rooms, there is a piano and chalkboard. There are music textbooks stored at the front of the room behind the piano. There is also a keyboard and a few drums. I suspect that the majority of the instruments are kept in the storage room because there arent many instruments around the room. On the far wall, there are decorated bulletin boards and a carpeted area for students to sit on. There are also additional keyboards stored against this wall. One bulletin board is decorated with the text, America the Beautiful, as well as a map of the United States, and facts about our national anthem. At the back of the room (and at the front of the carpeted area) is the classroom SMARTboard. The middle of the classroom contains two rows of chairs facing the piano. The other side of the classroom was primarily used for storage of additional chairs and risers. The goal for the class today was to continue learning note names in the treble clef. The class began by reviewing the note names on the chalkboard at the front of the classroom. Mrs. Schliem reminded the students of the sayings used to remember the note names, FACE and EGBDF (every good boy deserves fudge) and quizzed students on note names. After she had demonstrated how to identify various notes, she had students move from their chairs to the carpeted area. She gave concise and clear directions for the first row to stand up and sit in a row on the carpet, and the same for the second row. The students sat in two vertical lines facing the SMARTboard and waited for further instruction. Once the students were settled in, Mrs. Schliem introduced the SMARTboard activity. The game allowed students to further practice their note recognition skills and promoted teamwork within the classroom. It was cool to see how the students worked together to help their teammate choose the correct note name. After each student had a turn, the students returned to their seats and were given a worksheet to further practice recognizing notes. Mrs. Schliem had a helper pass our white board and music textbooks for the students to write on. The worksheet they were given had 3-5 notes in each measure. Within each measure, the note names spelled out a word or name. After students had completed the first half of the worksheet by identifying the correct note Mrs. Schliem announced while they were working that if they werent sure what to do, that they should look up at her. I thought this a was a unique was of further explaining the expectations and content while the students who knew what they were doing could continue working. One the note names had been filled in, the students were able to plug the words they created into the provided story. The third graders thought the story was absolutely hilarious and were non-stop laughs. To maintain classroom management, I noticed one technique that Mrs. Schliem used constantly throughout the class period. She would count to three when the noise level in the class was higher than she wanted. When she reached three, if the students were still to noisy,

Taylor Meehan

Observation #2

they received a strike. This happened twice during this class and as a result, they did not receive a diamond on the classrooms shine bright like a diamond chart. Another effective thing that Mrs. Schliem used to prevent any further distractions during the SMARTboard activity was to move a student closer to her. This particular student was being rather chatty in the back of the line, so she moved him to the front near her. He instantly was brought down a level and stopped talking. At the end of the class, Mrs. Schliem discussed with the class why they were not receiving a diamond. You could tell the class was a little upset that they werent receiving a diamond for the chart, but it seemed like they knew why they were not getting one. I was grateful to have the opportunity to observe a general music class in a different school and with some older students. The students were so happy to be in music class which I think is absolutely great! I am thrilled to observe in Mrs. Schliems classroom again tomorrow with another third grade class. 11/26/13 Today I returned to Mrs. Schliems music room. Because I was there just a day prior to this observation, I will not go into detail regarding the classroom surroundings again. However, I will further elaborate on a technique that I noticed throughout both of my observations. When giving directions to her class, Mrs. Schliem gave short and clear directions. This is so important, especially when teaching at the elementary level. She also would give her directions and then tell the students to do the activity or hand out materials. This is another important concept because too often students are lost in their worksheets or activities before the directions are even given. In todays observation I got to see another third grade music class in full swing. Today the students focused on the same tasks that the last class did. This class however, was an entire class period ahead of the last and therefore just completed the worksheets they had previously began working on. To begin class, Mrs. Schliem called on four random students to come up to the chalkboard and draw a whole, half, quarter, and eighth note. The students cam up to the board and drew the notes accordingly. It was pretty awesome to see the students work together to draw each note. It was every more interesting to me to see how the student asked to draw the whole note did so. He began my drawing an open circle and started drawing lines through it. At first I was confused by what he was doing, but quickly realized he was depicting that the note had four beats. He split the whole note into 4 equal parts and labeled each part with numbers 14. After these students completed this, Mrs. Schliem drew an empty staff on the board and discussed with the whole class about how they identify the note names. She went over the sentence and FACE sayings. Before drawing anything, she asked the class if FACE went on the lines or in the spaces. Some of the students seemed confused so she reminded them of the saying, space face. Since space and face rhyme, this helped students remember which saying to use. After this demonstration was complete, Mrs. Schliem handed back the students worksheets individually. She did this so that she had the opportunity to discuss with each child what they still needed to complete and/or fix. As students finished their worksheets, they gathered on the carpet and participated in the same SMARTboard game that students played yesterday. This allowed students to further practice the treble clef notes.

Taylor Meehan

Observation #2

It was so great to see these students having so much fun with learning notes. Mrs. Schliem mentioned to me that she was preparing the students to play recorders later this year. You can tell that the students are so eager to learn because of this. Mrs. Schliem has such a positive impact on her class. The students are all smiles when they are in her classroom. I hope that I can implement some of the strategies and techniques Mrs. Schliem used in her classroom in my own classroom.