Week 13, due Dec 4


Comments: 2
  • #2

    Ashley Maeshiro (Friday, 27 November 2020 23:24)

    Mililani-Ike:

    At Mililani-Ike this week, I taught my third lesson of my tiri-tiri unit, practice tiri-tiri. Lauren helped me make adjustments to my lesson after I taught the first couple of classes to help me find more success with the students and to engage them better. She had me make every student sing and pat/clap the rhythm for the last measure of Tideo. We have been transitioning the students to be more open to singing unmuted in class. When we switched to the half sized classes, we started to volun-tell students to perform rather than waiting for volunteers. For the most part, most of the students were willing to perform when they were called on. The half of my focus class that I saw on Tuesday were very engaged and willing to participate, but the half that I saw on Wednesday had more behavior problems. Usually the students are pretty well behaved, so maybe it was because Thanksgiving break was coming up.

    I think that the most challenging part of the lesson on my end was explaining the homework, which is my post-assessment. Although we create “how to complete” videos for assignments, and we go over the instructions in class, many students do not follow instructions. I made this assessment a bit more complicated than what the students are used to, so I think that many of them have been struggling to understand what they need to do. In the pre-assessment, I had the students create 4-beat patterns on the first page, and label the rhythms in the 4-beat patterns on the second page. Many students submitted the assignment without completing the second page. After my second unit lesson, I gave the students a short assignment to label the rhythms in the 4-beat patterns that were already written, but now there were tiri-tiri’s. Most of the students completed this correctly. That made me think that maybe the students just needed to get more familiar with the task since it was basically the same thing as the second page of the pre-assessment. For the second page of my post-assessment, I’m having the students do error detection on 4-beat patterns that are already made and labeled. If they think something is incorrect, they have to explain why. So far, many of the students that have already submitted their assignments did poorly on this section, but I am not sure if that is due to them genuinely completing it incorrectly, or if they just didn’t understand the instructions well. When I gave them hints on what to look for, some students were able to make corrections, but some still struggled, so I think it is a combination of the two. Also, for some reason, some of the labels I have for the rhythms seem to be missing on some students’ ends but not others because students have been marking the same beats as incorrect because the label is missing. This is another issue with distance learning and relying on technology because on my end, all the labels are there so I am not sure what the problem is, but the other issue is that one of the patterns is incorrect because it has five beats instead of four, but students have been marking that pattern as incorrect due to the missing label. I have been giving feedback to all the students on their assignments, so I have been trying to explain and fix the issue so that I can fairly assess the students. With feedback, most of the students who choose to resubmit their assignments are able to make corrections.

  • #1

    Ashley Maeshiro (Friday, 27 November 2020 23:23)

    Highlands:

    I only went to Highlands on Monday this week, so I only saw one beginning band and the beginning choir classes. For beginning band, we basically did the same thing as last week. We went through instrument set-up and we got to playing the first few notes on their instruments. I think that so far, the most challenging section to work with has been the clarinets. They have the most pieces to put together when assembling their instruments, and they are the largest section. In the clarinet section, there is one student that needs a little more assistance when told to follow directions when assembling the instrument. It seemed like when they were struggling to get a sound out, they tried to change the set-up of the instrument, for example, turning the mouthpiece the other way around. Clement told me that the student struggles to cover the holes, so that is likely why they struggle to get a sound out. The euphonium player in the class struggles to play low Bb, they often play the F above it or the Bb an octave higher. After class, Clement told me that sometimes for the low brass players, if they are struggling to play lower notes, they can try to work their way down from the notes that they are able to play as a way to differentiate instruction. This made me think about the clarinet player from earlier because their first note is low C which requires them to cover some holes, but I could have had them try to play open G instead, just to get a sound out. I want to work on being able to differentiate instruction on the spot based on the needs of the students. I think that I have been slowly adding more tools in my toolbox over the semester in terms of solving instrument specific problems, but I need to practice remembering them and applying them in context.

    For the choir classes, Clement told me to just try whatever I think might be good activities for them because we have been having a hard time connecting and engaging with them through more traditional choral approaches since they cannot sing together. To review solfege with the students, I tried doing an activity I learned from Concert Choir at UH. It basically replaces the exercise “do, do-re-do, do-re-mi-re-do” (up to so with hand signs) with words (do, I-like-do, I-like-coo-kie-do, etc). I think that the students enjoyed this a little more than just doing the exercise on solfege with the hand signs. I then tried to do the “Llama Llama Red Pajama” activity that we did in MUS450 with them. After I had them listen to Ludacris rap Llama Llama Red Pajama, I showed them how they can try it themselves. I found a PDF of the words to the book Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss online, so I copied it onto a Google Doc and split it up into different chunks. This way the students could just choose a chunk to work on. I also gave them three different rap beats that they could try out. I attempted to “rap” a section of Green Eggs and Ham to the three different rap beats so that the students could hear an example, and hopefully feel a little less embarrassed to do the assignment. I was a bit worried about the lesson because it was out of my comfort zone, but I think it went okay. I tried to be really excited about the whole time to make it seem fun. Some students expressed that they were having fun working on the assignment, and others were a little less enthusiastic. I think that many of them felt a little worried because it is out of their comfort zones too. I’m trying to figure out ways to help the students feel more comfortable when they present next class.