Rehearsal Episode 2 Reflection

What aspects of the lesson were successful? (Include student achievement.)
The students all played well (enough). The main point of this lesson was not to rehearse the music, so I didn’t really spend any time fixing notes or rhythms in the music. However, they all understood and played the improvisational backgrounds well. Also, those who elected to improvise did quite well, especially considering that they were all playing secondary instruments.

What aspects of the lesson would you have changed? (Include student reaction.)
First, I could have been a bit more organized. I started the lesson by calling an audible: I suddenly realized that I did not have the flute part covered (it is a very prominent part of the piece), so I got Stephanie to play the flute part on piano. Also, I would have spoken a bit more slowly and clearly (this is a common problem of mine). Lastly, my march vs. overture discussion at the end of the lesson was weak: the content was questionable, it wasn’t presented really well, and it was just a bit confusing.

Reflect on your pacing of the lesson as seen by students. What cues were they giving you?
This is difficult to answer. As it was early and these are all my peers, they all tended to look fairly disinterested and apathetic for much of the lesson. However, once we started doing the improvisation portions of the lesson, they seemed to all perk up and get more interested (even excited, at least in Steve’s case). Overall, though, I felt like the pacing was good. While I spoke quickly, we didn’t move so quickly that anyone got confused. Nonetheless, I think we moved quickly enough to prevent total boredom.

Improvement goals. (Describe future teaching strategies, presentational changes, etc.)
In the future, I would work on the last part of the lesson (the march vs. overture style analysis). This portion was quite weak and could use a lot of beefing up. Otherwise, I would just work on my actual presentation – my speech in particular.

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