Observation Task 2
April 7, 2006

Unfortunately, the second and last official observation session I spent with Mrs. Morris at Sutton Elementary School was the day after the second grade music program. Thus, she spent the class time taking requests for songs from the book from the kids and singing some of these songs. It is for these reasons that I cannot complete this observation quite as intended; there was essentially no whole-part-whole strategy usage, no lesson objectives, no higher order thinking through questions (there weren’t even any questions, really), and no real skills or concepts visited except singing skills. I will now discuss what we did do in the class, even if it was so atypical.

The students came in quite quietly, although their main teacher told Mrs. Morris, “we’re having a day.” Mrs. Morris started by asking the students what they thought about the program the night before. Some comments made by the students include, “it was fun and I liked it” and “everyone had a good voice.” The students got up and got the textbooks by row and sat back down. She asked students what they would like to sing, and they raised their hands. She took 3 requests and wrote them on the board, and they then voted, as a class, on which of the three they would like to sing.

Next, she led them through a brief vocal warm-up, except this time she did not use Curwen hand signs as she has every other time I have seen before. They then sang the first song, with the CD. Not all the students sang, but most did. After singing the first song, she then asked for another suggestion, and she replaced, on the board, the one they just sang with the new suggestion. They started talking, so she said “give me 5, please,” and most put their hands up. Though not all put their hands up, all became quiet. She moved on. The students sang with some unintentional harmony, but Mrs. Morris did not stop to fix anything. Also, on the next song they sang, the woman who sang on the CD stylized a bit. I’m undecided about this – what she sang, technically, did not match what was written. This, to me, implies to the student either different ways to read the music or that it isn’t really that important to sing what is on the page. I understand that she stylized to sing it in the style and make it sound more interesting; I’m just not sure if this is a good idea for students this young, especially. Also, on one other track it was a man singing, in his normal chest voice. This goes along with the falsetto-versus-chest voice singing debate for men. I listened closely and only heard a student or two attempting to sing in the same octave as the recording; obviously, they should not be doing this, but it is natural to echo in the octave heard. So with this recording, too, I don’t think it is most beneficial to the students.

Later, the students sang Jingle Bells. For this one, she handed a student a set of jingle bells, and he walked through the aisles, jingling it (nearly on beat), and then he randomly handed it off to another student who got up and continued this process. This is the most complicated the class got this time. At the end she told them they had been “a little loud today, but good job overall.” They put their books away by row and then lined up to leave.

Part of me, the part that has had whole-part-whole and other various strategies pounded into my brain, has a bit of a problem with this day’s class. We did nothing truly productive, we followed no specific plan, we taught no specific concepts (nor even reviewed any), and it was mostly based on the students’ opinions. Normally, this would be unacceptable. However, the human part of me says that this is okay sometimes. Sure, one would not want to teach like this every day. Nonetheless, there are times where a little meaningless (and harmless!) fun is just fine and, in fact, a good idea. The students had worked hard for some time on their program and had performed it nicely the night before. While this observation did not produce a very useful write-up, I believe that, in its own way, this day’s class was very useful and beneficial to me as a future teacher.

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