Samantha Ragusin

MUSE 258
Dr. Ester

MLPT Reflection

I am very happy with the way my Music Literacy Peer Teaching turned out. While there are (and

always will be) things for me to work on, I feel like I have made a lot of progress when it comes

to teaching in front of my peers, not only in this class but in other methods courses as well. After

watching the video, I see my confidence shoot up, which is something I have been struggling

with for a long time. I, of course, need to continue to work on things to be the most effective

teacher I can be, but I am proud of myself for how I did with this peer teaching.

Planning-

In planning for this lesson, I watched the video that was posted to Blackboard to have a good

example of how I might want want to approach my own teaching. This helped me a lot because

while I knew the concepts I would be covering, it was nice to see how to pace myself. I

separated the two lessons (rhythm and tonal) from the thirteen-minute video and built my own

lesson plans from that. I also made a checklist to ensure I covered the required material on the

lesson plans.

Preparation/Practice-

As I have done with field teaching, I found people to teach for, even though they are music

students, I find that this is the most realistic and accurate way to practice a lesson, especially if

teaching in front of actual students. Since we peer teach in front of fellow music majors, we

usually expect for them to answer correctly to our prompts, but when working with

inexperienced musicians, I can actually work towards making them better. While this peer

teaching was not for non-music majors, I still found it useful to practice my lesson this way. I
was more aware of things that could have mistakes in them, and I could figure out how to

correct them.

Strengths-

I feel I am getting so much more confident in front of the classroom. While I need to work on

skills themselves that relate to music literacy, after reviewing the video, I know that the front of

the classroom is where I belong, even if my anxiety gets the best of me occasionally. This time,

I messed up going from la minor echoing back to the major triad. I did not get a chance to solve

my own problem because unfortunately, my classmates solved it for me. I think it was a

problem that won’t come up again because it is a problem that has never happened before.

While the goal is to not have these issues, I am proud of how I did not let that mistake ruin my

entire lesson.

Areas of Improvement-

I have been and will continue working on both triads for echoing and echo-translating, as this is

an area I know I struggle with. I need to master this in order to teach it to my students, and I will

continue working on it. I need to work on not speaking too fast, as well as knowing when

students no longer need my help. I saw that I sometimes sang “do mi sol mi do this is home”

even when the students could have figured it out themselves. This is something that needs to

be decided based on grade level. I think I sang this an appropriate amount of times because I

was in the mindset that I was working with elementary level students. I know for a fact that I

need to trust myself more. I feel as if I don't have any confidence which really affects my

teaching in a negative way. After watching my video I could tell that a little bit of confidence

could have gone a long way. I also need to slow down my speech. When I am nervous, I tend

to speak/sing way too fast, and while it may not be as big of an issue now, in the future, it will

be. If middle school students notice this, they will be quick to take advantage, which would make
teaching that much harder. I will continue to work on these things throughout my courses here

at Ball State.