Jenny Jordan

MUS149

Observation Reflection #27

December 11, 2020

This class was a high school general music class. The teacher was a student-teacher. The

classroom did not have very many posters on the wall, with a whiteboard at the front of the class.

The environment of the class felt task-oriented, but still quite relaxed. The teacher didn’t have to

deal with any disruptions during the class.

The teacher started by having the students clap rhythms out. The teacher then went into

explaining the difference between simple and compound meter. The class then goes into clapping

various rhythms on the board. The teacher then goes onto explaining how to clap the larger

pulses in compound meter rather than all the “sub-pulses” as well. After this, the teacher played a

“game” where he pointed at different rhythms on the board and the students said the rhythms out

loud. The teacher then passed out a sheet where the class would read rhythms off of, saying them

out loud while clapping the larger pulses. The teacher split the class into different groups for

students to read different rhythms from the sheet at the same time.

The teacher would have the students clap out rhythms written on the board so that they

could hear and feel what the different rhythms sounded like. In using both the visual medium and

the auditory medium, students would be able to understand the concepts more in-depth. The

teacher appeared to be a bit nervous, which is understandable because he was a student-teacher.

Despite this, he was still able to communicate and explain the concept clearly. The teacher asked

students if they had any questions to quickly assess how the class was doing in terms of

understanding the material. The teacher would make sure to give positive reinforcement when
the students were doing well and apologize when he wasn’t being as clear as he could have been.

Overall, this was an interesting video to watch, as I haven’t seen very many other student-

teachers in these videos. Seeing the difference between less experienced teachers and more

experienced teachers is interesting and makes me wonder how much I will improve in my years

of teaching.

Link: https://youtu.be/OGGGfRRjBjc

Honor Code:

I affirm that I will uphold the highest principles of honesty and integrity in all my endeavors at

Gettysburg College and foster an atmosphere of mutual respect within and beyond the classroom.

-Jenny Jordan