I can't wait to be a music teacher!

I went to Vogel Elementary about two weeks ago to observe for one of my classes here at TLU. I walked into the classroom which was the 5th grade class and they were practicing for music memory.  I just love music memory as it is an UIL event for students who are interested in learning the information on past composers and what the songs sound like. The teacher that I was observing is Mrs. Sanchez and she's been teaching for about 6 years now but started out as a band director before she decided to teach elementary music. The first thing that I noticed while observing is Mrs. Sanchez started to talk to her 5^th graders about what the UIL music memory was all about. Mrs. Sanchez was introducing the song “In the hall of the mountain king” by Edvard Grieg and integrated many different ways of getting the students to really understand the song. Here's a video of the song in case you have no idea what I am talking about.

The first approach Mrs. Sanchez took was to show the students an interactive listening map that showed all of the different musical elements that were present in the song. The listening map included dynamics, what instruments were being played, the coda, ending and troll pictures that tied in the story of the troll king in Peer Gynt. The students followed the map along that was being presented on the projector and at the end of the listening map, Mrs. Sanchez reinforced the title and composer of the piece by having someone answer who wrote the piece and what the piece was called. Afterwards, Mrs. Sanchez moved on to the second approach to learning the song by showing the students the hand jive to use in the song to incorporate pulse as well as engage the body in the song. At the end of the song, again Mrs. Sanchez had two different students say what the title of the song was and who wrote the song.

Next, Mrs. Sanchez asked the students if they wanted to go on a “troll hunt” which consisted of a repeat-repeat song-speech that included physical movements. The adventure the students went on imaginatively speaking was very creative and required the students to use different motions and accents to help distinguish the different parts of the music. Different concepts were touched in this one activity that include dynamics, pitch (high/low), clapping (pulse), different accents that changed the pace and flow of the music. After the students learned the motions they were able to produce those motions again but no words this time and the music was turned on. I was completely amazed by this activity as the “troll hunt” matched up perfectly with in the hall of the mountain king. I really enjoyed the fact that Mrs. Sanchez used a listening map, basic movements in the hand jive, teaching the “troll hunt” motions, adding the music all together with the motions, etc. to help the students really grasp what the song was about and how to remember the song. All of those techniques as well as Mrs. Sanchez constantly asking the students what the title of the song were called and who wrote it will no doubt cause the students to never forget the song since the mind and body were engaged throughout the class period.

Yay! They understand the song!

I was very excited to see this class as I would like to be creative as Mrs. Sanchez was and give my students the opportunity to learn music history while still being engaged. This was definitely one of my favorite class periods to date that I had observed.

Do you ever feel that you really grasp a concept after repeating the information several times? I was really excited to see how many times Mrs. Sanchez repeated the song and the information on the song! Can you think of a time when you had to reinforce something to someone a million times until they really grasped the concept?