Observation Task 1
March 17, 2006

This semester John Walker and I have been observing Mrs. Morris at Sutton Elementary School. Overall, I am fairly impressed with her teaching, although I will admit there are some areas where I feel she could be doing better. Each day she starts, usually immediately, with a brief vocal warm-up using Curwen hand signs and solfege, in a repetition activity. The students seem to follow the model fairly well, usually matching most pitches and essentially always following the solfege and even mirroring the hand signs accurately. This observation task will report, in particular, on my observations during two visits – February 24th and March 3rd, 2006.

On the 24th, when Mrs. Morris was ready to start the first activity, she asked them to quietly go to the front of the room and get a book and return to their seats; the quietest student was allowed to write the word of the day on the board. The text book used by Mrs. Morris (although I suppose it is actually probably the one chosen by the school and/or the previous music teacher before she arrived) is Music Connection (2000). On this particular day, she had the students turn to and sing Whistle While You Work. Her vocal model was good; it would be unfair for me to comment too much on her voice quality and timbre. However, her pitches and rhythms were quite close, though not always entirely accurate. As she listened to the class, she had them fix a handful of problems by just modeling and then having them echo those sections again. However, she never fixed any specific problems with any specific students. I’m not sure if she should have though; it seems that singling out students probably would not have been a great idea. The only classroom instrument I have observed her using is the one-octave diatonic bell set. Since this is hardly even a “real” instrument, it would be difficult to assess her playing technique; it was certainly sufficient for her purposes in her class.

To describe her instructional procedures, I would say that she is quite-well organized. Her lesson plans are fairly detailed, and she always has one ready to go for each and every class. Nonetheless, she is still pretty flexible, as I observed a couple of times. Right after passing out the xylophones to the students, as Mrs. Morris was beginning to talk about what they were going to play. One student raised her hand and said “Mrs. Morris, my hair’s staticy.” Mrs. Morris then said, “Okay, thank you,” and then went right on with class. I, of course, had a hard time not laughing when this happened; Mrs. Morris, though, was unfazed, as I am sure she is used to this kind of random comment happening fairly often.

Her transitions were very effective and the students responded quite well. In fact, they even seemed enthusiastic about putting instruments away – even if putting them away because they got in trouble for playing when they were not supposed to be playing. In general she simply seemed to have a handle on classroom management and behavioral issues. For example, at one point on March 3rd, the students were getting a little talkative. Mrs. Morris said “give me 5” as she put her hand up, signaling for the students to be quiet. Still not all were quiet, so she continued: “Fix the talking or we’ll take a couple of minutes of silence;” by this point most students got the picture. Later in the same class, a student who I later learned to be an excellent musician but a frequent behavior problem, was talking back to her. Mrs. Morris sent her out of the room again for a brief conference in private, but this ended in the student just being sent to the office. The other students definitely got the message and were great the rest of the period.

Concerning Mrs. Morris’ enthusiasm, I would say that she could show more, except that she is pregnant. She told us on the first day that she may not be feeling up to her best or getting too excited about things at times. This is probably the best reason why her enthusiasm and energy is a little less than it could be. Otherwise, her voice level and inflection, eye contact, and correct use of English was all quite good. The only technology she used in either day’s lesson was a CD player, which she used quite well. Her overall level of preparedness was quite apparent – and quite high.

The last thing I observed that I feel I should mention is her use of the term “self space.” She uses this to instruct the students, before a movement activity, to find a space in the room where they can move without touching anyone else or getting in anyone else’s way. Obviously, this is a very important concept for students to understand. I had just never heard the term “self space,” and I thought it was a good term because it is fairly descriptive but also simple and easy to remember. Mrs. Morris’ teaching is a decent model for other young teachers. I look forward to my last few observations with her.

[ home ]  [ philosophy ]  [ mused courses ]  [ pgp ]  [ intasc standards ]  [ links ]