Week 12 Lesson Review

This week I followed a similar schedule with the classes and Mr. Suzelis and I kind of traded off classes each day. It seemed to get the students back into the regular flow of things and make my exit much less noticeable. This week I will focus on my 6th grade lesson on Thursday. This was a lesson that just flowed very well for me; I was incredibly confident teaching it and I felt like I was able to keep the students engaged and under control even with lots of movement. We talked about the C major scale and I actually had them play the first three notes on the piano. For many of them it was their first time ever playing a piano at all. While I certainly recognize how fortunate I was to get such a well-behaved and mostly self-motivated class, that's not to say they were complete angels all the time or were free from disruptions. Even with playing on the piano, the biggest problem was making sure they understood the piano isn't a toy or something to play around with. Most of them were fine with that, but a few felt the need to do their own "improvisation" as they walked to their seats. I definitely should've been more clear about how to treat the piano before having them play as I did so after the first offense (as did Mr. Suzelis).

The rest of the lesson went fairly well. They were all able to at least get the first three notes of the C major scale and seemed to understand the concept of what a scale is. I also reviewed letter names of notes on the Treble clef and reviewed the purpose of the clef symbols themselves. Even I was pleasantly surprised how many remembered their purpose and what letter names go with at least the Treble clef (we haven't covered the Bass clef yet).