A day of Alhambra High Piano Lab Beginning Level Class: Classroom Environment and Students’ In-class Paperwork

Alhambra High School’s piano lab has a setting of 23 digital pianos in a classroom with great brightness effects. Here is a photo from the first period of beginning level class：

There are two different level of class settings: Beginning and Intermediate/Advanced Levels. A new students have to play for a short audition for teachers to show their recent piano ability, so teachers can  decide which level of class they are supposed to be in. For one semester of piano lab course, beginning students are required to play one recital as  their final grades at the end of the semester with no limitation of their choices; Intermediate and advanced students are required to play two recitals( one as the mid-tern grade and the other as the final grades). 80 percents of students’ overall grades in one semester come from their participation, including daily attendance, in-class paperwork and several quizes(small music theory tests and song practices from their textbook binders).

Here is an example of in class paperwork assignment according to recent rhythmic study:

 

Those materials below are examples of rhythmic sight-reading practice. Students will vocally use a actual vocabulary(Pie for a quarter-note beat, Pizza for two eighth-note beats, Eat for a half-note beat, Whole for a whole-note beat and Sh! for a quarter rest) for a”Tap and Count” practice, instead of traditional way of “Ta or Da”. I found it more effective and interesting for students to remember a rhythmic pattern in this way.

Philosophy of Music Education

Looking back to my music teaching experience from my previous courses and  public school conditions, the main purpose of music education is to help my students developing their own musicianship and their identity in performing musical pieces with my academic skill and music teaching professions according to students own interests and expectations, in a safe and welcoming classroom environment.

Compared to regular classroom, a student-centered education can always work in a music classroom.Under a free and relaxing learning environment, students are able to make plans for what they want to accomplish in each semester. As a music teacher, I want to be a effective helper and facilitator of music learning rather than simply give my students what information I want them to know. For example, in high school guitar and piano labs, I will ask my students to choose their favorite pieces at the very beginning of semester even though they have no musical background before. After that, I will give them various advises of how to improve specific technique based on my curriculum in order to play their favorite songs comfortably, so our students will be more willing and responsible for their in class study because of more determined goals.

In my opinion, music education is provided for broad masses, including music students from all ages and different backgrounds. Some music learners apply for their music education in order to grasp the skill for singing and playing a musical instrument they prefer; some music learners want to cultivate music as a life long hobby; for elderly and disabled groups, music education can strengthen and improve their intelligence, social and response abilities etc.

Due to the development of technology and the massive social reform in our society, our music learners are becoming more knowledgeable and culturally diverse than before. Public schools are able to provide different educational opportunities for our students’ need, which including choirs for singers, bands for instrumentalists and certain instrumental lab(usually piano and guitar). A music educator needs to be quite sensitive on new information around us and be able to use digital technology effectively into daily teaching process.The Orff approach is one of my favorite music education method I have learned. This approach provides easily comprehensive ideas for music learners in different level of music backgrounds, through singing, dancing, chanting, movements, drama acting and percussion playing and composing activities. The importance of rhythm and movement really help music beginner to master the elements of music efficiently instead of learning from a written form.

Piano Lab Lesson Plan for Both Beginning And Advanced Class

Alhambra High, Piano-Lab Lesson Plan for “Key Signature”

                       Ziwei Bai

Content Standard:

-1.1Read an instrumental score of up to four staves and explain how the elements of music are used.

-1.3Sight-read music accurately and play expressively.

Objectives:

– Students are able to figure out what key signatures mean to a given note, how to write a key signature (including sharp sign “#”, flat sign”b” and a natural sign) and how key signature mean to relative major and minor.

– Students are able to compose a piece of song based on a C major key version “Ode to Joy” or “Largo” from Dvorak with added key signatures.

Materials: Textbook “Alfred Adult All in One” p.13, 35 ; Key Signatures-Treble Clef, Bass Clef(showing below); Pencils.

Procedures:

Lesson 1: Basic Concepts of Key Signature

1. What are “Sharp” and “Flat” mean? Look at your keyboard.  
2. from “C to B” direction. Generally speaking, Sharp means a half step up from a white key note;Flat means a half step down from a white key note. They are usually black key notes except: E # is the F, C b is the B.
3. Gave students 5 examples of Sharp and Flat notes to test their understanding of concept.
4. Turn the page to “Ode To Joy” and “Largo” from the textbook binder;
5. Review the Ode To Joy and Largo with me, playing without headphone.
6. Used your pencil to compose your song by added key signature on original C major version, trying on your keyboards when you are doing the composing part and play through your whole composed piece to review before showing to teachers.

Lesson 2: Advanced Knowledge on Sight-reading and related Major and Minor key.

1. learning how to recognize the key signature on both treble and tenor clef with the chart I shown above. The patterns of sharp signatures follow the orders of F,C,G,D,A,E,B.; flat signatures follow the opposite orders of B,E,A,D,G,C,F.
2. Despite C major and A minor(which have no key signature), the way to find the major key of one piece of music is counting a step up from the last sharp signature and the penultimate flat signature.
3. After recognizing the major key, you can find the related minor key by counting a minor third(4 steps) from your major key.
4. Turn the page to “Ode To Joy” and “Largo” from the textbook binder;
5. Choosing one major or minor key from the chart I shown and transposing the original song to your selected key on Sibelius.

Lesson 2 Teaching Video：

2:21-5:05 Learning Patterns of Related Major key by observing given key signatures

8:03-10:23 Patterns of Sharp and Flat orders,

10:30-10:38 Mrs.Peterson’S approach in memorizing Sharp Patterns: 

Fat, Cat, Go, Down, Alley, Eating, Burrito. 

12:16-13:48 How to find the related minor key from its’ Major key. 

18:37- 20:18  Transposing C major Ode Joy to G major, Example of first two measures. 

Community leader

Music is an universal language which can connect people from different cultures together into a whole united community. As a music teacher, being a community leader in a classroom environment needs to provide enough opportunities for students to perform music in front of public. For example, the field trip to NAU piano department and public opening piano recitals can really strengthen the connection among students,teachers and other communities. Those social activities also help me to develop the essential leadership as a music teacher needed.

Here is a photo after Mr. Jeferey Swann’s NAU Master class: 

 

 

Inquisitive Thinker

For a music educator, becoming an inquisitive thinker for me is to be curious toward our students, teachers and environment surrounding us. Moreover, an inquisitive thinker needs to be brave of asking students questions that you did not know during class. Because by learning from them, I can make a better connection with students next time in the classroom and I am able to find out better way to meet their demand in their music learning process.

Innovative Practitioner

For me, a music teacher always has to be creative on their teaching skills and never be obstinate on our own experience and philosophy. In order to become an innovative music educator, we need to first become a patient thinker and communicator for all students, then trying and creating different strategies of teaching in the real classroom environment which based on our analyzing of different learning style. We should never stop searching the most effective learning methods by practicing in the real classroom environment, even though we might make some mistakes.

Fleixble Musician

The flexible musician in my opinion can be generalized into two aspects: flexibility of playing different types of musical instruments and the flexibility in performing different types of musics. However, as a music educator, we are not only training ourselves as a flexible musician, but we are also learning how to apply our flexibility in teaching music.

I learned how to be a flexible piano teacher this semester in Alhambra High’s piano lab. For example, as a classical trained piano players from my past studying career, we learned how to play piano from the most traditional way by mastering sight-reading skills and reading scores. However, many of our high school students have no musical knowledge but they are trying to play very tricky popular music pieces in several months. Many students in high school’s piano lab are able to learn by their ears or by watching the tutorial videos from YouTube. In this condition,  piano teachers needs to extend their repertoires according to student’s various interests and they also need to be able to fix various technique problems which always happen in piano beginners.

MUE 480: Course Reflection

Final Course Reflection Paper

          Ziwei Bai

Looking back to my philosophy of choral music education and my experience as a choral teacher assistant at the very first time in the public school setting, I realize that the main purpose of my teaching philosophy won’t be changed. As a middle school choir teacher, I am not only responsible for following my daily curriculum, but also more importantly, in charge of building a harmonic choir family with my academic skills and professions so that my student can develop their own musicianship and identity by themselves.

Like what I said before in my teaching philosophy, my belief of a qualified choral teacher is to be well adaptive of various cultures and background, creating healthy learning environment with respects and encouragements for every improvement, learning from my students with curiosity and treating my students with passions as always. I can recall those philosophies so deeply from my own experiences as a choir student and from my internship placement.

As a choir student from a totally different cultural background, the curiosity of learning and experiencing musics from other culture and language can be one of my major factors to join the choir. I really enjoyed the mans choir curriculum last semester, with both American folk songs and songs from other culture and styles like “Baba Yetu” from Nigeria. On the other hands, the experience from classroom and performance stages may also influence whether I will continue singing in choir too. For me, the major reason why I decided to join gospel choir is because of the energy and the sense of united community that Dr. Thompson brought to his choir group. In fact, many of our gospel choir members won’t be the best individual singer, but the the choir is growing so fast because of the positive classroom environment and passions that Thompson show to every choir members. On the other hands, I had never sang in church and with school orchestra before I joined mans choir and gospel choir.Those experience from performing in front of public can be very valuable for me which I might not be able to have in the future. This is why as a choir teacher, we need to take care of every choir members thoroughly and keep the diversity of our choral repertoire.

As a choir teaching assistant in my internship placement, I found out that tons of paper works and preparation monthly musical programs are very common for a middle school choir teacher, which might be a distraction for me to stick on my philosophy perfectly. My mentor teacher had no time to joke or really smile even to her colleagues due to the stressful daily curriculum and tasks. We all known some middle school students are in their puberty which can potentially be a troublemaker in every choir class that acts countrary to other students.However, she was able to ignore those negativity by providing more caring body language and repeated phrases to attract student’s attentions. For my perspective, middle school students are very accepted and sensitive for teacher’s cares and passions on them because they like being followed.

By reviewing my growth as a teacher in this semester, the most prominent part for me is the confidence building throughout daily practice in the classroom as well as knowledge from my colleagues and mentor teacher. At the very beginning class, I didn’t even know how to start a simple warm-up section for my middle school choir students because I cannot make the cue properly for them to sing after me. It is so grateful that my mentor teacher helped me to use hand gesture for cuing and suggested me to practice at home in front of the mirror and avoid overuse of piano for help. With those home practices and guides, I am able to do more and more comfortable to help her with every warm-up section for the rest of the semester, which really boosts my confidence in teaching choir. For the sight-singing exercises, I learned quite a lot of teaching skills from my colleagues micro-teach section such as how to use modeling more than descriptions and how to use more solfege hand signs more fluently and effectively. All those methods worked for my internship experience so well and my voice projecting is also gradually developing with my improving confidence. However, there is a large space to enhance for my ability to organize my language in teaching. I really had to review and practice my lesson plan for several times in order to make my teaching fluent enough and without occasionally stops or pauses. Moreover, my conducting skill still needs a long time for developing into professions by individual practices and private assists.

For most parts in this course, I had learned a lot of theoretical knowledge and teaching experience from Mr. Evans and graduate colleagues during lectures and discussions. However, for students like me who have lack of conducting skills and choral teaching experience, learning can be more effective with additional micro-teach experiences and professional instructions from my professor and colleagues. However, the last two expert’s lecture that Mr.Evans brought to our class were quite useful and insightful for our future choir teaching preparation.

Chapter 9 Mini-Project 3, Books Review

Sight-Singing Books Review

(1) Music for Sight Singing (9th Edition),Edition by Nancy Rogers & Robert W. Ottman, Published by Pearson, 2013.

1.  Are the materials specific to one method of teaching? 

Yes, the materials of this book are structured from a wide range of folk musics from the world and practice exercises, which focus on developing sight singing skills and ear.  

2. Are the materials graded for difficulty?

 Yes, the materials of this book arranges from simple level to more complicated contents from the beginning chapters to the end.

3. Is the material scaffolded appropriately?

 Yes, the material is very cohesive to the knowledge that each unit introduces and the arrangement of the material is very concise for reading.

4.  What are the strengths and weaknesses of this materials?

 The strengths of materials are the accessibility for public school for daily based music training and the book is not too long and complex for reviewing; the weaknesses can be the lack of songs collection especially for professional voice training.

5.  Are the materials based in real music or specially composed exercises?

Yes, I think the materials includes both melodies from real music especially folk songs and composed exercises based on different difficulties level and knowledge of the unit. 

6.  Do the materials feature a variety of rhythmic and melodic content?

 Yes, every unit in this book combines both rhythmic and melodic based exercises. Rhythmic exercises include simple and compound meters to irregular or changing meter signatures; melodic exercises include all minor and major keys in any diatonic modes and various harmonic progressions.

(2) Melodia：a comprehensive course in sight-singing, by Samuel Winkley Cole.

1.  Are the materials specific to one method of teaching?

 No, the book focuses on teaching both large group classes and individual reading and sing-alone based on the requirement from instructors.

2.  Are the materials graded for difficulty?

 Yes, the content of this book includes level of difficulty from diatonic to harmonic exercises, one part to two part, keys from less to more signatures, major to minor and easy to hard in rhythmic patterns.

3. Is the material scaffolded appropriately?

 Yes, the material are structured into eleven different series and there is an introduction of knowledge for exercises on the beginning of each unit.

4.  What are the strengths and weaknesses of this materials?

 The strengths of this book are abundant exercises for both public and private teaching use, clear clarification and goals for each unit, all exercises are related to official authorship. The weaknesses can be the edition is old and lack of modern and cultural diverse materials.

5.  Are the materials based in real music or specially composed exercises?

 Yes, the source of the materials are mostly from 17^th to 19^th century famous western music composers and masters of choral compositions. 

6. Do the materials feature a variety of rhythmic and melodic content?

 Yes, well classified by key-signature and time-signature into many different series.

(3)Ear-training and Sight-singing Applied to Elementary Musical Theory：A Practical and Coördinated Course for Schools and Private Study, by George Anson Wedge.

1.  Are the materials specific to one method of teaching?

Yes, the purpose of this book is to show how to teach elements of music by using the three particular ways: exercises to be written, exercises for diction to be used for ear-training and exercise for sight-reading. 

2.  Are the materials graded for difficulty?

 No, the book has no specific clarification of level.

3.  Is the material scaffolded appropriately?

 Not exactly, the material structures from a random setting of knowledge for teacher to use.

4. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this materials?

 The book has very specific explanation and introduction of each basic music element and definition that can be feasible in public school and private instruction. However, the arrangement of this material is too random and complex for beginning music learner. Moreover, lack of songs collection from real musics.

5.  Are the materials based in real music or specially composed exercises?

 No, most of the songs are composed by authors instead of officials.

6.  Do the materials feature a variety of rhythmic and melodic content?

Yes.

(4)The practice of sight-singing, by John Henry Cornell

1.  Are the materials specific to one method of teaching?

 Yes, the book introduces the method of measuring sight-singing skill is based on a thorough knowledge, theoretical and practical from tonality to rhythm.

2.  Are the materials graded for difficulty?

 In some ways from exercises but not very clear from the arrangement.

3.  Is the material scaffolded appropriately?

 Yes, the book combines a four main series about basic tonality, tonal practices on the intervals, rhythm and rhythmic practice on the intervals with specific small sections of related knowledge from simple to hard.

4.  What are the strengths and weaknesses of this materials?

 The purpose of this book is helping people develops a sense of sophisticated tonal skill as a foundation to learn various sight-singing work which can be effective in some ways. Moreover, there are many specific explanations for music beginner to learn to prepare for sigh-read. However, the content is too long and complex and there are hard to find feasible exercise in a concise way.

5.  Are the materials based in real music or specially composed exercises?

No, the materials are mostly written by authors instead of officials.

6.  Do the materials feature a variety of rhythmic and melodic content?

 Yes, there are huge numbers of small tonal exercises and rhythmic exercises for teachers to use.

 

* Overall, I think the Melodia：a comprehensive course in sight-singing, by Samuel Winkley Cole. can  be the more feasible book for me to use because the arrangement of this book is more concise than my last two sight-singing book and the classical sources of this book are more abundant too.

Assignment 3:Extrinsic Motivators for Potential Singers

What are five ideas or activities that would serve as extrinsic motivators for potential singers in a middle school / junior high school choral program? A high school program?

The first idea to serve as extrinsic motivators especially for adolescents, is the peer pressure, because students during their adolescence want to be seen as really successful in some aspects or doing something.

The second idea to serve as extrinsic motivators are the influence of being with good friends who are current choir members. When the current choir member are excited in choir, they will respond positive information to persuade another potential new singer who is his friend, which is pretty effective in doubling the enrollment of choral ensembles.

The third idea to serve as extrinsic motivators is the advertisement of the choral program. By showing the school of the various achievements that your choir had made with social media, school newspapers and school’s website could be effective in recruiting potential singers.

The fourth idea to serve as extrinsic motivators can be the travel. The visiting opportunities to other schools or out of state’s musical festival by joining the choirs will be very valuable experience for potential singers.

The fifth idea to serve as extrinsic motivators can be the teacher’s fun personality. Because many students at the age of middle school to high school tend to select a course which the teacher is one of their favor.