Microteaching #2: Chord Changes
November 16, 2004
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Reflective Essay

Quite honestly, I was glad that I did not have to go on the first day.  I was prepared for that day, but not as much as I was wanting to be.  Therefore, between Tuesday and Thursday, I spent some time going over my lesson plan and practicing teaching.  Before Tuesday, I had not practiced the piano accompaniment; however, before Thursday, I spent two times in a practice room, practicing the simple piano accompaniment that I planned to use.  Also, very much like last time, I created the lesson plan while “teaching” in my mind. Unfortunately, when I started planning, I was unsure of exactly what I was going to teach.  Even once I figured out that I would do chord structure (I didn’t want to do rhythm or meter, for example, because I figured those would be done by several others), I still did not have a good idea how I would teach it.  I started with the assumption that we had “learned” chords in a “previous class.”  The only thing I was actually attempting to teach was chord structure and the flow of chords in a song.  Really, I was just trying to apply what we had “learned” to an actual song and give them practice in doing this (in different keys).  I think that this goal may have been somewhat too limited, hence my difficulty in coming up with things to do.  After watching the video, I think that it would have helped a lot if I had been able to come up with more creative ways to teach the concept.

In this teaching, I had a few strengths.  For one, I feel that I did involve the students in the learning.  For most of the lesson they were actively writing something down, writing on the board, or answering questions.  This way, everyone was more likely to be involved and pay attention, because they had something to do.  Also, my content was solid.  Though not terribly difficult, it was good information, taught correctly.  I also was able to correct and help one student remember that in minor keys the V7 chord has a raised third.  Finally, my piano accompaniment was good.  Unfortunately, it was not flawless.  I had been able to do it perfectly every time in a practice room, but I guess I was a little distracted during the teaching or something and I missed one of the chord changes.  But I think that it was still helpful to the students to have the chord changes played while we sang.  Furthermore, it was good that I played the chords since we were just about to study and talk about the chord structure of the song.

What still challenges me in teaching?  Well, several things.  First, I apparently did not plan for time very well.  I planned for, and practiced to, right about ten minutes.  That way, I left myself two whole minutes of leeway, knowing that it always takes longer than planned.  Well, for some reason, I ended up teaching for thirteen and a half minutes – and I didn’t even get to the last thing on my plan!  I honestly am not sure what caused it to go so long.  The times that I stopped to give the students time to work I planned in to my time and practiced with, so that didn’t do it.  Perhaps my explanations got a little long-winded (and thus boring and monotonous), but I’m just not sure.  I know one thing – despite the fact that I somehow needed to teach all that faster, I still tend to talk too fast.  Most of the time I am still understandable, but most of the time I need to slow down my speech to be clearer.  For example, when talking about the song that we were about to sing, I was mumbling some stuff (that was supposed to be amusing – I don’t know why I was doing that) about how we already knew it and it was an old favorite.  I was talking softly and quickly and it was hard to understand.  The teaching itself also did not seem that interesting.  Sure, the students were “involved” through the progressions they were writing down and on the board, but as I watched the video I just got bored.  I talked fairy monotonously and didn’t even seem to “teach” much of anything.  Perhaps that was just the nature of this lesson, and it was okay.  I’m not sure.  I guess the point was mostly to do hands-on practice.  But still, I wish that I had been more creative and that we could have done some more interesting things.  Also, the point was to teach a concept through the song.  Well, I used the song and its chord progression for our model to practice.  However, we only sang it once, just to refresh our memories.  I then proceeded to not mention the song again.  We should have taken a look at the chords and played them, heard the changes, maybe even had the students come up and play some of the changes themselves.  This would have aurally reinforced the concept of chord changes and their purpose.  I merely talked about how they were used, not why.

In the future, I will start by coming up with a better plan.  I don’t know if my lack of a great plan this time is attributable at all to lack of planning time, but it seemed, once taught, to be a fairly weak plan.  Also, more practice time may have shown me that it would take longer to teach than I thought it would.  I could have also practice-taught a friend of mine, so that they could actually answer the questions and give me a more realistic example than what I made up in my mind as I practiced.  During the actual teaching, then, I will, in the future, try to talk as if the content interests me.  As we have learned, when the teacher genuinely believes in what he or she is teaching and enjoys it him/herself, then the students are more likely to react positively and care about the lesson.  I think I was pretty passionless, even to the point of being downright boring to listen to.

Overall, I feel that I was effective, though not necessarily interesting.  I sufficiently explained what we were doing and the students all understood, based upon the fact that no one asked questions when given the opportunity.  According to my primary actual assessment (which was the chord progressions they wrote and then wrote on the board), the students responded well and understood the material.  I must add, though, that I cannot be one-hundred percent sure that their understanding was sorely due to my teaching; my fellow MusEd 100 classmates surely understand these kind of chord progressions, so I wasn’t actually teaching them anything new.  But, at very least, I was effective in conveying to them what I wanted to teach them and how I wanted to assess their understanding.  I feel that this teaching was successful, with two comparisons to my last one – I was more succinct and stricter with my plan, and that was good, but it was not as interesting and attention-keeping.  I know that I have much to improve on over the coming years.

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