Week 3

This was my toughest week yet. I started to take over more of my cooperating teachers classes. I really am enjoying teaching and having control over more classes but it is exhausting. My normal day consists of symphonic band in the morning, then the beginner band, then five periods of small group lessons that are 45 minutes each, then we travel to the other school to pull the beginners out of recess, then we go to the PLC meeting, plan period, and then after school band. The good thing is that most of the individual groups are on the same schedule and are working on the same things. So I get to learn what is going to work and by the later periods in the day I have a pretty good idea of what is working and what was not working. The only bad thing is that I only see these groups once a week, so most of my lessons each day are repeated multiple times a week. This makes lesson plans easy but also I have to make sure that I don't skip things in the lesson because I thought I already got to it but it was the lesson the day before or the period before.

I also have been planning my EdTPA lesson plan. My cooperating teacher and I agree that if I am to show concrete student learning and growth I need to work with the beginners and work with them as they learn how to count and play half and quarter notes. After the beginners have learned half and quarter notes there is not any concrete thing that they learn that I could show real growth and be able to hand out worksheets. They are mostly learning notes on their individual instruments and working on correct embouchure and fingerings for their instruments. By teaching the beginners half and quarter notes I can give out a counting worksheet before I teach them as a formative assessment and then give them another counting worksheet at the end of the three lessons learning segment. I am going to break it up into lesson one is introducing the new lesson, with a quick review on how to count the notes that they already know, lesson two will be introducing half notes, and lesson three will be introducing quarter notes with another counting worksheet at the end. These lessons seem short but I only get to see the beginners for about 25 minutes before I need to end the lesson so that they can catch a bus back their school. Because of this, I need to keep my lessons brief, only introducing one concept at a time. Also, I only see the beginners twice a week. So I will start my EdTPA lesson on Tuesday and not finish until the following Tuesday.

only hurdle that I am going to have to go through this week is getting the video permission slips back from my students. I sent it home and out out of 21 students only 9 gave the slips back to me. My cooperating teacher also emailed the parents the permission slip explaining what it is and when I needed it back. So hopefully having it sent home and emailed I will get the rest of those slips back. If I do not get them all back I do not know what I am going to do, because the group is so small I do not know if I will be able to videotape my lesson.