Kansas Music Standard 1: The teacher of music has skills in teaching and evaluation techniques.

Knowledge

•The teacher understands repertoire appropriate for various developmental stages.

•The teacher knows representative works of the past and present from the solo, small ensemble, and large ensemble literature.

Performance

•The teacher performs alone with musical understanding and technical proficiency sufficient to interpret representative works of the past and present.

•The teacher performs in small and large vocal ensembles or instrumental ensembles.

•The teacher demonstrates the ability to access musical and literary resources for vocal and/or instrumental music.

•The teacher develops instrumental pedagogy appropriate for various developmental stages.

•The teacher demonstrates singing effective for instructional purposes.

•The teacher demonstrates functional knowledge of various band and orchestra instruments.

Rationale

Throughout my collegiate career I have learned and demonstrated skills in both teaching and evaluation techniques. Through my field experiences in USD 383 and USD 475, I have had practical experience teaching students in elementary, middle, and high school music classroom. At Manhattan High School, I assessed students to determine their voice part and standing arrangement individually based on a rubric. On this rubric, I evaluated each student’s vocal range, timbre, and their ability to sing a solo. In the lesson plans I created to teach at Fort Riley Middle School and Eisenhower Middle School, I demonstrated skills in writing creative lesson plans that incorporate all four learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile), as well as scaffold the students’ learning.  Through the course curriculum I have written, I have demonstrated skills in selecting appropriate and engaging choral literature. Within the curriculum, I have also built in several modes of assessment including performance-based assessments, rubrics, portfolios, and journals. When teaching ensemble-based classes, assessment based on performance is happening constantly aurally as you work through sections of the music to determine what parts of the piece you spend the most time working on in order to make the piece performance ready. I also planned rubric-based assessments to evaluate students’ individual and small ensemble performances of the pieces I assigned, as well as rubrics for students to be peer-assessed. The portfolio assessment was designed to be a place to showcase each student’s work throughout the year, including rubrics and practice journals, to show improvement.

Artifact 1: Lesson Plan

This lesson was designed to teach durational symbols to a 5th or 6th grade general music class. In this lesson, I scaffolded the students’ learning from modeling, to guided practice, to demonstrating learning through cooperative learning groups, and finally individual demonstration of learning through an activity. I also incorporated activities that teach to each learning style: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile. I assessed student learning by having the cooperative learning groups share their musical MadLibs with the class where they were checked for correctness by myself and their peers. I assessed individual learning by student performance in the Music Symbol Twister game, followed by the quiz I designed for the next class. Throughout my field experiences and education classes, I have learned how to write and structure lesson plans in a way that will not only keep myself organized in my teaching, but will help me teach in such a way that scaffolds the students learning to take them from their current known to a new known. I will use this knowledge throughout my teaching career to create quality lesson plans that will teach students in the way that they learn.

Artifact 2: Curriculum

I designed this curriculum for a 3A high school mixed choir. In this curriculum, I have assembled a variety of pieces from different styles, composers, and historical pieces for three concerts and one festival. In the curriculum, I explain my reason for selecting each piece, how I plan to teach it, how the piece fits with the standards, and how I plan to assess the students as they learn the piece. In creating this curriculum, I learned how to select a varied repertoire at an appropriate level for my students to sing that represents a wide variety of cultures, styles, and time periods with specific learning goals. I will constantly be using this skill when I teach in order to select an appropriate curriculum for my students that will achieve the specific learning goals I have set for my students.