For my peer teaching, I taught the concept of ties through the song This Old Hammer.

To

prepare for my lesson, I spent a lot of time formulating my lesson plan so I knew the exact steps

I was going to take. Afterward, I spent time teaching myself in front of the mirror to ensure I was

confident enough to teach my lesson. Throughout my lesson, I used problem-based learning,

sound before sight, and assessment to thoroughly teach my students about ties.

In terms of my strengths, my biggest accomplishment was effectively using sound before

sight and problem-based learning throughout my lesson. By introducing the song by rote,

students were able to grasp the intervals and pitches, without any notation necessary.

Furthermore, I introduced the topic of ties by teaching my song with ties and then taking them

out. By doing so, my students were able to hear the difference instead of just understanding the

difference in notation. With that I made my students identify the differences themselves before

identifying the topic at hand, allowing them to use problem-based learning skills. Afterwards, I

drew what a tie looked like on the board which effectively showed them what the notation

looked like. Another strength that I had was my overall confidence and demeanor. Throughout

my lesson, I made sure to repeat passages that the students weren’t singing properly and

wouldn’t allow them to move on till we fixed the issues. Furthermore, when accessing my

students I made sure to check on each one of my students. By numbering my students off, I was

able to split them up and more accurately hear each one of my students. While accessing them, I

made sure to get up in their business so to speak, making sure they knew I was accessing each

one of them. With this being said, I believe another strength was my ability to access students. I

made sure to assess their accuracy of the song before moving on to the concept and then

accessed their understanding of what ties were by making them fill out exit tickets. Lastly, I felt

like I was able to build a good rapport with my students by calling them by their names.
 In terms of what could’ve been better, I believe I could’ve done a better job with the

chunking process. Instead of starting with four bars at a time, I could’ve done two bars at a time

which would’ve probably led to fewer mistakes. Also, I shouldn’t have gone straight into the

chunking process. At the beginning of my lesson, I asked my students to act like investigators

and figure out what happened to John Henry. Instead of going back to this topic, I went straight

into the chunking process. What I could’ve done was model the entire song and then ask my

students what happened to John Henry. This way I would be able to know if my students were

paying attention and were listening to the lyrics. Furthermore, I spent a lot of time practicing and

assessing the student's ability to sing without ties. This in itself was a good process, but I

could’ve spent more time explaining the importance of ties instead of just what they are; for

example, I could’ve asked if it sounds odd when we rearticulate the same syllable twice and then

explained that’s why we use ties. Lastly, I believe that I could’ve done better when it came to

showing my students where exactly the ties were. Since ties are a visual concept, my students

wouldn’t be able to tell where the ties were without notation. What I could’ve done was put the

music up on the projector after students identified what ties were through the sound-before-sight

method.

One of the main points I learned through my lesson was that sound before sight is not

sound instead of sight. When teaching sound before sight in the future I know that using notation

is found after students understand the concept through sound. Furthermore, I learned the

importance of contextualization. In the future instead of merely teaching the concept I will teach

the importance and explain more thoroughly why it is used in music. Lastly, I learned the

importance of calling students by their names. If I don’t know my student's names in the future I
will ask them what it is to build rapport. All in all, I learned a lot from my lesson and believe I

was able to successfully use sound before sight, problem-based learning, and assessment.