Grant
Undergraduate
Music Education |
Grant
Undergraduate
Music Education |
After teaching 23 individual lessons last week, I can definitely say I am exhausted! In the IB curriculum, each year group has a Unit of Inquiry, where all of their instruction focuses around a specific theme. The Year 2s are working on a unit on water and I had a couple of really fantastic lessons with them last week. One of our classes we focused on sound waves and vibration, including how lower pitches and higher pitches have different wavelengths. I brought in 3 glasses and filled them each with different amounts of water. We sketched the sound waves of each glass, determined what notes each glass sounded (hit the glass with spoons), and put them into an Orff orchestration of the Erie Canal (also water themed!).
Over the past 2 weeks, my mentor teacher and I have planned Friday Recitals where students have played piano, saxophone, and trumpet for faculty and their peers. I worked with the saxophone and trumpet students 1-on-1 in the days leading up to the recital and they played great! We put on the recitals in the music room, where students and faculty can attend during their lunch break. The recitals have been well attended and we are hoping they will be a weekly occurrence! As of right now, the only music in the school is classroom music. In my public speaking classes for Years 7-9, we have been continuing with the United Nations, types of governments, and types of debates. For the United Nations, we have been discussing what topics the UN is involved in and their responsibilities. Students have also been focusing on different types of government, focusing on similarities and differences between England, Italy, and the United States. The students were truly surprised by the Electoral College and asked lots of great questions. Our debate students have been focusing on techniques such as Ad Hominem, Ad Populum, Straw Man, and the False Dilemma. Students in our debate classes have been participating in and creating scripts utilizing each debate tactic. Managing classroom behavior is what I am focusing on the most - keeping students engaged and being good listeners to their peers. I have been trying different ways to keep the middle schoolers more focused and I have had the best luck with assigned groups of 4. When each student walks in the room, they get a number 1-4 and that is their group for the class. I have been keeping track of which groups work really well and wish groups do not. I have truly underestimated the importance of keeping students focused as soon as they enter the class. With the younger students I have been using a small drum for them to march to as they walk to the music room. With the older students, I have been utilizing bell-work - a short task with a timer as soon as they enter the room. I have also been keeping track of how long it takes the students to get set up for the class and created a scoreboard for their best times. I even tried an experiment where I have a prompt on the board and said nothing as the students entered the room. It is interesting that the Year 9s took 14 minutes to all enter the classroom and sit down. I only have half of a week left and I am done! Enjoy this watercolor painting I made over the weekend!
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This past week was a 4 day week due to Italian Liberation Day on Tuesday April 25th - it was nice to have that Tuesday off but that Wednesday truly felt like a Monday.
I taught multiple Year 4 lessons on music technology, transitioning from Chrome Music Lab Sound Maker and introducing them to BandLab. It took almost one whole 45 minute class to have all the students create an account - it’s funny how technology doesn’t go your way some days! The goal of their BandLab assignment, as I have mentioned in my last blog, is to create a composition with sounds from Siena. The Y4 students are continuing to learn about looping and sampling and how we can utilize both in compositions. One way I demonstrated this is by relating ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme Gimme!” to Madonna’s “Hung up.” (For reference, listen to the first 40 seconds of Madonna https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e99M6-7KW0k) With the Year 1 students, we are transitioning from our unit on tempo/measurement to animals and instrument families. I am teaching them about the 4 main instrument families (woodwind, brass, string, percussion) and how each produces their sound. I have been utilizing resources such as the US Army Field Band Instrument Demonstration for Beginning Band and Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Students have been working on naming the instruments, placing them in their respective instrument families, and relating instruments to animals (2 of their examples are relating a flute to a bird and a trombone to an elephant). They are truly a smart class and have been utilizing percussion instruments to see the different ways we can play percussion. My mentor teacher and I are debating to start recorders with them - yes the instrument that everyone plays in elementary school. We will continue to learn more in depth about instrument families this upcoming week and I think one way to demonstrate the woodwind family is to play saxophone for them! Over the weekend, 5 of us traveled to Grosseto and then onto a beach campground, Riva del Sole near Castiglione Della Pescaia . It rained all weekend but that didn’t stop us from enjoying our stay. We stayed in a 3-bedroom cabin, ate at the beach restaurant, and even went swimming in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The weekend was a fun time even though it was hard to stay dry! I know that my last posts have been primarily focused on my travels, but the blog this week is about the International School! As I have touched on before, I have a fantastic mentor teacher. Through the guidance of Dr. Renzoni and my mentor teacher, I have taught most of the Year 1 and Kindergarten/Transition classes, and am starting to teach some of the older years. On Monday we had one day of Parent/Teacher/Student conferences where my mentor teacher was in conferences all day - I taught 3 classes on my own (Y1, Y4, Y5) and they went well!
In the past few weeks, the Year 1 students have been doing a Unit of Inquiry on Forces of Measurement and are discovering that the speed of the beat can be measured (tempo). I have introduced different tempo speeds, tempo names, metronome markings, and have been focusing on the relation between animals and tempo. For example, they are associating animals such as turtles and snails with slower tempos, while cheetah and hummingbirds represent faster tempos. Another activity we have done is listening to excerpts from The Carnival of the Animals (Saint-Saens) and discussing what animals they think the music represents. There is one song I taught them called Grizzly Bear that they adore and ask to sing every class. Each time through the song there is a grizzly bear - one student “sleeps” while the other students sing and do aural/tonal patterns (singing exercises). The goal of the song is to not wake the grizzly bear and sing the patterns right! Each class I have to come up with new patterns because their tonal capability and echoing is truly inspiring. This past week I have introduced the Year 4 and 5 students to music technology. All of the students in the school either have an iPad (younger students) or laptop (older students). We have been utilizing music technology via free websites such as Bandlab and Chrome Music Lab Sound Maker. Through these websites, students have already made simple, group compositions in their first few lessons. The next few weeks we will focus on each student creating their own composition. Because the Year 4 Unit of Inquiry is All the World’s A Stage, we want to include sounds from around Siena in their individual compositions. One example of this is recording the church bells from the city center and uploading the recording into the websites! So far I have been truly impressed with the intellect at the school, especially the younger students. When talking about animals, the Year 1s came up with hummingbird and tortoise, and then had a discussion about the difference between turtles and tortoises (which I did not know!). In addition to music, we also teach 3 public speaking classes where Years 7-9 are having great discussions on government, status, and are creating a Model United Nations to debate world topics. Ciao a tutti!
What an eventful Easter break I have had! On April 5th I had a half school day and I was on Easter break until coming back to school on April 17th! I was fortunate enough to meet up in Pisa with 2 of my childhood friends from Niagara Falls. Although we met in Pisa, we stayed 4 nights inside the historic walls of Lucca. During one of our days in Lucca, we rented bikes - there is nice bike path around the fort and takes about an hour (while stopping for pictures along the way). One of the most beautiful things about Lucca is that it is surrounded by the Monte Pisano, a gorgeous mountain range. Another cool fact for all of you opera fans, Lucca is the birthplace of Giacomo Puccini! For one night In Lucca, I cooked dinner for the first time since being in Italy - yes my host-family spoils me. We had spaghetti and sauce - the sauce consisting of onion, garlic, fresh tomatoes, red wine, and basil. The following day we ended up heading back to Pisa on Easter and visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The tower is surrounded by hundreds of yards of green grass, filled with children playing soccer. We hung out in the courtyard, sat in the grass in the shade of the sun, and kept an eye out for flying soccer balls. The rest of my break included a few days walking around in Florence and then back to Siena! Hello everyone! I have been teaching for over a full week at the International School of Siena alongside a wonderful mentor teacher. My mentor teacher has only been at the school for around a month so we relate on being new! The music classes here range from Year 1 to Year 11, so there is a lot of material to cover! One of my classes of focus is teaching in a Kindergarten/Transition class which consists of students ranging from age 3-5. I learned very quickly that there is quite a drastic range of intellect and personalities, and I am constantly improving on my pace. A few things that I found helpful for this age group is to always move the class forward, have minimal down time, and continually praise individuals . I am keeping the students moving and singing, while being as goofy as possible. In regards to Italian cuisine, I am full all the time! One of my food highlights of the week is Fiorentina Steak, cooked rare in the kitchen and then served on skillet-type plate, cooked to your liking. I have been continuing to try as much chingale (wild boar) as I can, typically served over pappardelle pasta in a ragu sauce. At the school, where everything is cooked fresh, we have had pumpkin soup, turkey and gravy, and pasta and red sauce. On Friday our students attended an assembly that talked about career goals, climate change, and included a musical performance. Our 5th graders sang “Wayfaring Stranger” while performing on percussion instruments. They were advertising our 5th and 6th grade choir which will be starting this week! I am so excited to experience the starting of a choir and instrumental music program from scratch. Fiorentina Steak Chiangle pictured above and below. Marita, Connor, and I wearing our Bengal Orange at the Piazza del Campo.
Hello everyone! I have been in the wonderful country of Italy for almost a full week, and I am truly loving every moment of it. The first thing I noticed is the amazing cuisine, especially wild boar, cinghiale. After 3 flights and 24 hours of traveling, we were tourists in Firenze (Florence), with Dr. Renzoni as our guide/translator. Our sightseeing began with the statue of Michelangelo’s David at the Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze, accompanied with some unfinished busts that proved that even Michelangelo had a few trials and tribulations! I was able to pet the Fonatana del Porcellino, the lucky bronze pig statue that will bring you good luck. In addition to more sights, a great Airbnb stay with my peers Connor and Marita, we took a bus to Siena where I met my fantastic host family.
My host family, consisting of a great couple and their 10-year-old daughter have been so welcoming and supportive and I could not be more grateful to them. They have showed me that Italian culture has aperitivo (drinks and appetizers), followed by your first course, your second course, and then desert – molto buono! In Siena there are 17 different contradi - closely-knit neighborhoods, represented by their own flag and customs – this is what life revolves around for the Sienese. While exploring, I have gone on a walking tour of the city, toured the International School of Siena (my placement), gave my number to jazz students busking on the street, and went on a tasty wine tour of Chianti. I am truly enjoying the experience, the unbelievable food, and I am so excited to start my teaching at the International School of Siena on Monday. |
AuthorHello everyone and welcome to my blog about my experience student teaching at the International School of Siena! My name is Grant Asklar and I am a senior Music Education major at SUNY Buffalo State University. I play primarily saxophone, clarinet, and flute, and am looking forward to this intercultural teaching experience. Archives
May 2023
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