Observation Form

Name:  Scot Stephenson
School: Adams Spanish Immersion School  Grade Level: first
Class Observed: Music    Teacher’s Name: Liz De Rado
Date: February 22, 2000

Objective: To learn the song, “The Ants go marching” in Spanish, the vocabulary, and practice movement.

Materials/instruments teacher used: Piano, voice, blackboard, rhythm sticks, paper scraps, magic marker.

Books used: none

Songs used: Bienvenidos a musica, “The Ants go marching”, Adios a musica

What musical approach did the teacher use? Direct instruction of the song.

Student difficulties observed: Students didn’t know all the vocabulary, some couldn’t keep attention span for all 10 verses of the song.

To what degree were the teacher’s expectations achieved? To the fullest degree.

Other observations: The lesson began with “Bienvenidos a musica” a song the teacher composed and begins all of her lessons with, ending all of her lessons with “Adios a musica”. Two students come to the piano, one sits at it and the other stands next to it. The one standing recites a sentence. The one sitting plays a C then a G and the whole class hums the fifth. Then the whole class sings the song as the one sitting plays a very simple C, G, C, G and D, G, D, G accompaniment. It ends with a scale going up while the class sings and actions “hands up in the air” and a descending scale with “hands all down”.

First the teacher lead the class singing the song. Then she divided the class into groups of 1 through 10. That took a long time, because each group began anew, i.e. student # 1 for the set of 1 was not in the set of 2. While this was happening a boy who walks with arm braces fell out of his chair, probably with the “help” of his neighbor, Trey. The teacher stopped everything and told Trey to help him back up and that he was responsible for the boy. She told him to ask the boy if he needed a kleenex. Trey did so and I could see that he did feel sorry for knocking the boy out of the chair. After all the groups were made, the class sang the song again, with the groups parading around the class during their number, holding either one or two rhythm sticks. The children were so happy to do that, especially the boy with arm braces, who hobbled around with one arm brace and held one stick.

Elementary Special Methods – Music
CIED 596.13

Observation Form

Name:  Scot Stephenson
School: Adams Spanish Immersion School  Grade Level: third
Class Observed: Music    Teacher’s Name: Liz De Rado
Date: February 22, 2000

Objective: To review the notes B, A, and G on the recorder and practice the song “Hot Cross Buns”.

Materials/instruments teacher used: Piano, voice, blackboard, recorders, bleach water, rubbing alcohol, cotton balls.

Books used: none

Songs used: Bienvenidos a musica, “Hot Cross Buns”, Adios a musica

What musical approach did the teacher use? Direct instruction of recorder technique.

Student difficulties observed: Some students could not open the mouth piece of the recorders they selected to clean them. Many students kept dropping their recorders on the floor so that they would have to come clean them again. Some did this five to nine times. Some students had difficulty making soft sounds.

To what degree were the teacher’s expectations achieved? To a high degree.

Other observations: It took about fifteen minutes to get everybody a recorder and have them clean it. It looked really inefficient to me. I liked how the teacher went over the finger techniques, first herself, then she had four students come up one at a time and call out B, A, G for the class to finger while the teacher concentrated fully on noticing who had correct/incorrect fingering. Then they played the song, first singing while fingering, then line by line of students playing while others finger silently, then by boys/girls.
One girl saw me sitting in the back of class when she came in and said, “We don’t need a baby sitter.” The teacher reprimanded her and she got her recorder last.