Observation 1

I observed at my High School.
It was cool to see my Directors in action without being the one in the seats. It's strange because they can have fun with the students but can get up there and take charge really easily. While watching the regular Concert choirs it was interesting the divide in kids you could tell the ones who wanted to be there and produce great music and then you could tell who didn't give a crap. It was frustrating for me to watch so i can only imagine what it is actually like for the director. Some things I saw in the classroom that i would use in my own are unique things like having a day where they listen to 2 of the same song by different groups and having the students compare and contrast the tone, rhythm, color, etc it helps the students train their ears a bit and help them critically think about music while also exposing them to different styles of music.

Digital Media Project

This one is pretty self-explanatory we were to use a software called Garage Band to make a 3 minute song. I thought this activity would be fun because in High School I took a Music Technology class and this was the kind of stuff we did and was really excited to use a new software. So far this has been my favorite project.

http://soundcloud.com/tabicoulam/tabis-thing

enjoy.

Rote Song

For this project we had to teach our class a song. I did Hedwig's Theme from Harry Potter. I found challenges with this activity because it was solely on you if you were off pitch so were they if you messed up it could confuse them. I had problems with staying in key myself and the song modulated in the middle and I messed that up. i think my only saving grace was that this song was recognizable.

Music Activity

This activity was our first taste of teaching. We were to teach our class an activity that had to do with music. Now, in High School when Mr. Granger wasn't there I would direct the Sophomores so I didn't think that this activity would be a problem and was actually looking forward to it. But it did prove challenging I don't know whether it was the nerves of being taped or in front of peers or what but things did not go as smoothly as they had when i practiced. one of my biggest flaws in this activity was getting side tracked by Grant. If i had been more clear on what they were to do and gave a few more examples it would have gone a lot smoothly but without those things I think it was a good activity and would use it with a future class.

Influential Teaching

This is the first activity that we did for class. It is supposed to be a 1-3 minute speech on the person who inspired us to be music teachers. I picked 2 people instead of one because the both had different affects on me. I chose to speak about my two High School Music Teachers/Choir Directors Matt Granger and Chad Goetz. It was really hard to put everything i wanted to explain into 1-3 minutes because I wanted to show everyone how awesome it was to work with them but I ended up not saying everything I wanted to say or not explaining myself right which is probably because it was the first time speaking in front of our class. Also what i had initially wrote was really long so i had to shorten it. So all in all i could have done a lot better.