Week 9 Lesson Review

This week I taped my 8th grade general music lesson for Thursday since we didn't have class on Friday. It was also the lesson that Mr. Suzelis formally evaluated. We discussed his evaluation on Friday, though we also discussed it briefly after school on Thursday. The beginning of the class was spent having the students finish their first project of the 9 weeks, the adufe drum from Portugal. The final part today was finishing the drum heads (made with colored packaging tape) and some cosmetic enhancements with additional tape and/or markers to decorate. This part doesn't need much from me other than monitoring student progress to make sure they are following directions and not doing anything that is unsafe or could negatively affect their projects. One student used some masking tape to decorate his. I was aware he was doing it, but didn't think it would make that much difference, though Mr. Suzelis was worried it may affect the vibration of the drum. I made sure to test it after class to see if there was a noticeable difference and there didn't seem to be, but I guess we'll see when we start playing it on Monday. The only major difficulty was one student's frame cracked while we were putting things together and he had to basically start over from the point where the drum head is actually assembled. Mr. Suzelis ended up taking over that, though I was ready to do so if needed.

After everyone was finished I had them put their drums away, something I thought later wasn't the best idea. We had to go over the notation system used in the book and the best way is to have the students play it themselves. By the time we got to that point there wasn't a whole lot of time left (about 10 minutes), so I basically introduced it and then had the students finish reading the section on Portugal's history. I easily could have done a different way of teaching that lesson, having students actually try and play it, but my thinking was more that even if they did, we wouldn't have class on Friday and then they'd have the entire weekend to forget it and we'd have to start on Monday anyway. So, I used the time to do a basic introduction and then get the reading out of the way. That way, on Monday we can really focus on the notation system right before we start playing rhythms for real.

Something else I need to work on is getting to know the student's names on all of my new classes so I can have more rapport and hold off any potential discipline problems. For the most part, despite the fear that this nine weeks would pose a serious discipline problem in both 7th and 8th grades, things have gotten off to a good start with minimal disruptions. Because the 8th grade class is designed to be more hands-on, that helps a lot with most discipline problems because students have something to do and the time used in putting the projects together gives them plenty of time to socialize, though I admit certain students (especially last nine weeks) seemed to go pretty slow when they were socializing and working at the same time. Some students would get done in a few minutes (and they were usually working on their own with minimal talking) while other students would take the entire period. That is something I will watch for in these last few weeks.