Alix Latta

2/27/2019

VTPT Reflection

I believe that, when it came to my planning for this peer teaching, I was very thoughtful

and purposeful in everything that I did while writing my lesson plan (InTASC 7). For each of my

exercises, I tried to make sure that I was providing my students with activities that not only

achieved my end goal, such as resonant tone or phonation, but was also easy enough for them to

understand and possibly even enjoy. I also ensured that, within my lesson plan itself, I was

taking a little bit of time to explain some of the more complicated subjects like the [ŋ] sound

rather than just assuming that they would understand it point-blank (InTASC 3).

Another example of the thought I put into my plan itself is how I planned to do my tonal

echoing exercise. I made sure that each new set of three notes started on the same note that the

last ended on, in order to ensure an easy and smooth transition between them for the students. I

tried to put the same amount of pedagogical thought into every single thing I would be doing

during my peer teaching, rather than simply doing things because I believe that is how they

should be done (InTASC 7).

When it comes to my preparation for my peer teaching, however, I fell short of how

prepared I would have liked to have been. While I did practice and prepare the exercises that I

had planned, I had mistakenly believed that the tonal echoing would not be a problem given how

often we do it in class, and therefore did not practice them before my peer teaching. This caused

a definite issue within my teaching itself, as I failed to remember the original order in which I

planned to do the patterns and even messed up on a few pitches. As a future teacher, this is

unacceptable, as my being incapable of confidently singing the patterns correctly and in a timely
matter not only messed up my students’ ability to learn them correctly, but my own ability to

correctly assess them (InTASC 1, InTASC 8).

Overall, however, I feel that my teaching episode was very strong, if a bit longer than it

should have been. One of the things that I am particularly proud of when watching back my

teaching experience is my use of the instruction cycle. I made sure that when I heard something

incorrect I first stated my expectations, listened for their response, and then provided feedback

on that response (InTASC 8). This made me especially happy when this instruction cycle began

to yield the results that I was looking for and the class’s tone became very resonant.

I am also proud of my teacher demeanor during this peer teaching episode, especially

given that it was at 8 in the morning. Though I was not capable of mustering up all of the energy

I would typically have during a teaching episode, I believe that I provided enough specific and

passionate praise to encourage and motivate the students (InTASC 5). Another small note on this

is that I believe my use of more layman’s terms rather than technical jargon was useful to create

better understanding of what I wanted among the students, though not as much as it may have in

an actual secondary music classroom (InTASC 3).

One of the things that I certainly need improvement on is my preparation for my teaching

experience. Not being able to properly sing the tonal echoing could have caused many serious

problems if this had not been a group of my peers, and in the future I will make sure to practice

extensively, regardless of how comfortable I feel with the exercise (InTASC 1). Another issue

that I failed to plan for was the pitch I gave the students for modulation during the resonant tone

production exercise. Though again my peers were capable of audiating up to the fifth, there is no

guarantee that my future students would be capable of that, and I should have thought more

thoroughly about the pitches I was giving rather than simply relying on my instincts (InTASC 7).
In the future, I will ensure that I put more thought into my plan as it applies to a secondary music

classroom, and practice consistently before my teaching episodes (InTASC 9).