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.

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.

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 1: Teaching Philosophy

Personal Teaching Philosophy for Choral Music Eduction

Ziwei Bai  

As a future choral music teacher, I always strive to search the most effective way for students in varieties of the classroom’s environment. Music, unlike many other subjects such as maths, science and even literature classes, needs teachers to be more creative and improvising in order to deal with any unpredictable circumstances during the class. In my opinion, the goal of music education in a public school environment is not only to share and learn from musics of others, but also encourage our students to form their own musicianship and identity throughout developing academic skills and performing abilities.

Due to my personal experience of learning music from knowing nothing to professions, I realize that how important the choral music education influences the development of musicianship for every human being. Singing is the  most basic and natural skill for every human being, which including a wide range of growth in human’s reading, speaking, performing and expressing skills etc. Moreover, joining the choir and singing together with children can be the fastest and most efficient way for developing students’ singing ability by accomplishing the goal together and the friendly and emotional environment which truly enhance student’s music learning efficiency. As a future choral music teacher, I should not only be a conductor or sectional player, but also the leading singer who can be sensitive enough in finding individual advantage from each student, continuously refining skills through practice and reflecting on areas of individual growths with encouragements.

As a result, my belief of a qualified choral teacher also needs to be well adaptive for diverse cultures and backgrounds in order to make the choir as a big family and community;creating healthy environments with respects and encouragements for every step of improvements; always having a curious mind and learning new things from students in order to create a connection of equality and friendship. And most essentially, always treating music as a life-long love and trying to give the same passions to every student as possible.

MUE 481, My Piano Class at Betty Fairfax High School

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Video 3：

MUE 481 Internship Reflection on Aural Skills Development

 Name:  Ziwei Bai           Date:  10/15/2016

Grade & clas: 9-12 Grade/ Piano and Guitar Classes

School:  Betty Fairfax High School  

                  Playing by Ear and Aural Skills Development in Instrumental Classes

In my initial opinion, I think our ear and aural skills is no doubt one of the most important technique in playing instrument. For my own experience as a student, I usually start learning a music piece by listening to the recording or teacher’s play first. Because my ears can always help me to remember the interesting and important melody moments much better than starting with sight-reading the music scores. Even when I was practicing piano at home, my parents who did not have any basic music education can usually tell the speed, expression and the volume of sound without watching me play closely. I believe that the aural skill is a natural talent for any person to recognize changes in music. Moreover, by experiencing more ear training and musics, people will develop their ability to judge the quality of music.

From the music journal “Teaching audiation in instrumental classes”of Professor Bruce Dalby, he recommended singing through the instrument as a basic musical skill in order to help instrumentalist improve their phrasing and intonation while they are playing. He wanted instrumentalists to develop “an extension of the mind’s inner audiation instrument” when they are playing instruments. From my classes, I believed the idea of singing through the music can help me develop a sensitive ear of accurate tunes and pitches and a refined mental reference of music like what I have mentioned. In my high school instrumental classes, our orchestra conductor would always help students play with more phrasing and musicality by singing through some tricky portion of music too.

From my initial observation during internship of my mentor teacher’s guitar classes, he always gave a new piece to student with playing a recording from YouTube and play by himself first. I feel like he really want students to be more interested with the piece, which they are going to learn and having a big picture of the song before learning by sight-reading the music score. Moreover, during a rehearsal practice, he always played together with his students in order to make them follow the steady tempo by hearing his part.

For my observation on students’ reaction to his guitar classes, students were very focus when he introduced a new piece to class and especially by listening to the professional playing from recording examples. Some of those students who already had a sophisticated guitar skills will try to imitate what they have heard from the recordings. Some students will react with “wow, wooh!” during some moments with virtuosity. Then in during the practicing time, my mentor teach would like to give them peer practices. I found out that students were trying to help each other subconsciously during peer practicing time or rehearsing like a small ensemble. That’s surprising me so much because I can see they were learning way more efficient by hearing each other and doing small rehearsal than only practicing individually.

For my mentor teacher’s view on this topic, he believed that as a beginning instrumentalists do need to know the basic music knowledge such as basic musical notations and techniques in order to play music. However, if they are not listening to themselves at the same time, they will not be able to determine whether they are playing right or wrong. Because kids who can play by ear have the opportunity to mentally hearing and comprehending music which build up their musicality(aesthetic feeling of music). In my observation of his teaching practices, when most of students struggled on a tricky parts, he would stop everybody and shown them on his guitar for several times from slow to fast tempo. Moreover, he will sing through the melody of this part loudly and let students repeat until they are getting almost comfortably. This is one way he wanted to use his voice and guitar to enhance students’ mental memory of difficult melodies I think.

If I am the teacher in the classroom for a beginning guitar, I will do the same thing by showing a professional recording of a new music piece which students are going to learn. In addition, I would like to show some brilliant improvising chords progressions based on my new piece. Because I believed there is no other better way to attract their attention in this way. I will also encourage them, “if you can learn the basic chords and single note well, you can play styles of music on your guitar.” For some kids who are already comfortable with their guitar techniques, I will encourage them to play in front of classmates and let the whole class to give positive comments and suggestions on others performance, so everyone in the class has a chance to think and learn something by hearing their classmates. Even for students who are afraid to perform on stage can show their opinions too.

Assignment 1, Songs in Their Heads reading

For those third grade children from Horace Mann Schoolyard, they know about music mostly from their various experience and even out of school such as TV themes songs or some commercial jingles. Those students can imitate what they have saw and experience to create rhythmic rhyme with interesting lyrics. For the children from a younger age between 6-9 years old, they learned from rhythmic chants, hand-clapping and jump rope activities in a singing game but for a fourth grade children, they are available to learn from previous memories. Moreover, those children are greatly innovative and collaborative even without professional musical education. I am very surprised about how they chooses their leader by finding louder speaking child and making the simplest rhythmic pattern to create good musical effect. I can find that young elementary children can learn music faster by creating simple rhythmic pattern or calls, cries and shouts even expressions to interact with their partners.
For the child Derek in the story of “Derek”，as a dancer, he also knows a lots of hip-hop musics by watching MTV from television and YouTube. So he can be able to learn the break-dance moves from those medias and then practice by himself. I am surprised about how Derek as a dancer can find his own rhythm spontaneously or by children’s cheers, claps, whoops and whistles and his ability make himself steady on beats. I learned that young children can be easily moved by passionate and dance movements which includes full of rhythm. The Derek’s story gives me an educative implication of the importance of dancing or with body movements while singing when teaching a song to children. It can change the atmosphere in class.
Questions：How can a dancer improves his skills by understanding the melody of music better? Why a young children can memorize a song better with body movement？

Final Paper

So far, I selected four questions related to four core music education principals which I think it is important for me.The first important question for me is “How can online tools and technology be incorporated into the delivery of the music curriculum?”. In my opinion, music educators have the responsibility to be sophisticated in handling the skills of using digital technology and understand the current standards and requirements of teaching through digital process. Secondly, what an educator needs to do is to try our best to navigate the students into a right way. As what the MENC member Matt McVeigh points out, we need to teach students digital citizenship while teaching music, “Embed discussions of credibility and responsibility into music lessons;Use Facebook and Twitter to expand lessons in ways that demonstrate proper and appropriate use;Invite students to participate in learning through digital media and supervise those interactions.” Third, making practical use of online tools especially Blogs.The NAfME member Kathleen Kerstetter uses blogging to satisfy for increasing the written communication and technology literacy between she and her students. From her article“Instructional Blogging in the General Music Room”, she states five suggestions“Listening Log, Evaluating Music,Vote on the Grammys,Personal Music Experience and Reflective Practice.” So students can build up their aesthetic of music and music profession in a faster way. Throughout these three process, it will be much easier to set up our curriculum professionally.

The second important question for me in teaching music is “How can we encourage learners to be more creative not only through composition but also in listening and performing?”This is an issue which most of our music educators might meet in the future. Most of the time, music educators depend on our knowledge of music theory and past experience in teaching, but it can not be really effective if students do not have the opportunities to make music practically by themselves. There are some scientific facts about how music can be highly influential on therapy only throughout performing and listening ways.For listening music, it is a great medicine to recall the old people’s memories. Blake Madden who is a musician and author in Seattle. In his article, he specifically records a story from Dan Cohen, founder of the nonprofit organization Music & Memory, and his quest to bring iPods into nursing homes nationwide as a form of personalized care for patients and playing the 60’s music to the old patient to cure them. Blake wrote,“when he first brought personalized iPods into a Long Island nursing home that year, it was as a volunteer, in order to earn trust in his methods. Initially, he set up three residents with iPods full of their favorite music and watched as their suffering from a variety of ailments––depression, diabetes––receded while they listened.” This shows how necessary and effective of listening process in human beings original’s music study. On the other hands, performing music is important for how people engage into the music they have listened and experienced. “Performing music of another culture can give us a direct visceral experience that listening alone cannot.” The MENC member Clayton Parr said. He also states: “If music is to function as a bridge between cultures, as performers we must be ready to move out of our comfort zones and experience music in a completely new way.” If I put it into a deeper thought, I will demonstrate to music learner that composing is understanding the surface of music, listening is to help you memory and think about the music and performing is help you get a straightforward experience and practical learning of the music.

The third question for me looks simple but still hard to do it perfectly: “How do you know that what you are teaching is really being learned?” For me, I think why this question is hard to answer perfectly just because of the standardized test policy. Most of the educators believe the result and performance of test can be the most accurate parameter of how much students have learned from the class. However, for my own experience of music learning, except music theory test, I can not think of another test can be totally fair to exam what students have learned? For the final jury each semesters, students might perform worse than usual if they are not prepared well both physically and psychologically. So the best way to know whether your students are learned is to know every of your students’ personalities and help them to be active and initiative in studying by themselves. As the educator Ben Johnson said in his article, “Returning to my original premise: great teachers do not teach. They stack the deck so that students have a reason to learn and in the process can’t help but learn mainly by teaching themselves. This knowledge then becomes permanent and cherished rather than illusory and irrelevant.” Especially in music teaching, we usually have a studio class and lab class to have more opportunities for students to perform themselves. Good music teachers will let all the students perform and evaluate each other first to see whether they are understanding and then start to put out their own opinions instead of putting a test and evaluate everyone soon.

The last question I have for music education is “What rules do you establish in your music classroom?”. In my opinion, although students’ own musical identities and experience can be different and flexible, but the core principal of establishing rules in a music classroom is to maintain the create a fair and functional environment to avoid the bias and harmful query to hurt consistency in the classroom. As the Teacher to Teacher: A Music Educator’s Survival Guide mentions “Have firm but fair discipline policy. Rules are made and discussed in class meetings, and we implement a lot of ‘love and logic’ techniques.” and “Efforts to establish and consistently enforce policies on class attendance, assignment due dates, and grading policy increase student self-discipline. These policies result in satisfactory performance from the majority of students and often prevent potentially lackadaisical students from doing poorly.” Moreover, in my classroom, the primary rule to follow is to be respectful during the class even when teachers are making mistakes and talk about the issues after class. Because I believe that if an individual in class makes a harmful influence, the other students will follow this ways without any responsibility of their actions. It will be hard to establish any policy if students failed to respect their teachers.

Poster Images：

Questioning Project

 Questioning Project  

For my own questions：

1. In the reality，why currently more and more young music performers exist but less and less great music teachers can be brought up from them？What is the main factor or the most effective method to assist a pure music performer to learn how to teach music as well as performing？
2. If I am now an instrument teacher, knowing that techniques（skills）and musical feelings are two most important things for the beginning music instrument’s learners in my coaching plan，how can I balance the way of my teaching. Should I start with the technique training first without too much introduce of the music origin，or should I focus on demonstrating the background and the understanding of musical performing and avoid the basic requirement of performing skills？
3. How can music teacher become a more interested job for the current music learner and professional music performers？
4. In what way can a music teacher help a child who without any music experience and background to step into the music world?
5. As a piano major student，for what process can you both play the song fluently and sing the song accurately at the same time？
6. What is the most important thing to make a relationship between newborn babies and music previous music education？
7. What is main differences of teaching music between children and adult？Is there any similar thing of teaching music between children and adult too？
8. Nowadays，many students are familiar with pop music and we all realized that people love music. However, a lot of young people still do not like the music class in secondary school and high school because they the knowledge of classical music and the way of teaching music is too boring and academic for those students. How can a school music teacher improves his/her teaching about that?
9. What is the value of music education on children whose parents do not want music to be their main job？Whether music education is worth for students who think playing an instrument is just a kind of entertainment after class?
10. Why do so many young people prefer the modern pop music to original classical music? How can music educators make the classical music more interesting and attractive for young students？
11. How important is the teaching environment for music learners? How can teachers help your students to enjoy learning music in your class by changing your teaching environment and music related activities?
12. Music is created by people and related to culture. How can a music teacher makes his class more interesting and enrich by combining the knowledge of the cultural background？

Questions from NAfME website and other music education journals：

1. How do you know that what you are teaching is really being learned?

• What are the current curriculum trends in music?
• What is the ratio of time spent talking to students about music versus time spent having them make music?
• What rules do you establish in your music classroom?
• What do you consider your greatest asset as a music teacher?
• What are some personality characteristics you feel are undesirable in teachers?
• What do you believe is the ideal starting age for beginning instrumental music instruction?

8. What core academic subject is only taught for one short period once a week for only one semester and them stop？

• If you are a music teacher, aparent comes to you and tells you that s/he is unhappy with the way another music teacher in the building is approaching something regarding their child. You also teach this student, and, privately, you think that the parent is correct. What would you do?
• If you arecurrentlyteaching a class of 5th graders and they are performing a dotted quarter/eighth note combination hesitantly or incorrectly. What would you do?
• If we were to ask other, non-music, teachers in your building about you as a colleague, what would they say?

12.How can we encourage learners to be more creative not only through composition but also in listening and performing?

13.In order to allow learners to take more responsibility for their learning, what type of changes should we make to our pedagogy?

14.In our current programmes of delivery, can you identify good practice where learners are already encouraged to take responsibility for their learning?

15.How can we build this ‘personal responsibility for learning’ into the delivery of the new National Qualifications?

16.As numbers increase in our departments, how do we ensure we can manage a class of learners doing different activities at the same time?

17.How do we assess individual learners in a collaborative setting?

18.How do we ensure pace and challenge for learners at all times?

19.How can we best deliver a broad general education in music?

20.How do we engage and involve young people in the assessment process? How do we set learning intentions? How do we agree success criteria with our young people?

21.How can we develop an interdisciplinary approach to the learning and teaching of music? How can we foster transferable skills among our young people?

22.In the planning and delivery of new courses, how can we make connections between the three elements of music: performing, composing and understanding music?

23.How can online tools and technology be incorporated into the delivery of the music curriculum?

24.In what ways can active learning enhance, deepen and improve particular aspects of music lessons?