Drew Michael Brennan Journal Entry #4 Praxis in Elementary Music The method in which Mrs.

Kimock paces her lessons are similar throughout each class that she teaches. Of course modifications are made in order to meet the needs of the students sitting in front of her. One of the traits I observed from Mrs. K is that her language is completely clear and concise. She makes sure that there is no room for confusion and she if there is she clears it up very quickly. One of the lessons that I thought was very interesting is when she taught a game, and then played it. In this lesson she greeted the class, and then quickly moved into the circle with the kids and said, Be my echo. The statements she uses in order to get the students to begin an activity are always very concise and short. To her a forward motion in her class is very important. As they began to echo her, she then added a new element. The game she was playing was known as Posion Pattern. In this game you are not allowed to sing the particular phrase, in this case it was MRD (because she was preparing R). Layering is a technique that she utilizes in her classroom quite often. She will begin with an incredibly simple activity/ concept and then build upon that. That way there are connections between each activity in the lesson. After having pointed out her poison pattern she made it clear to the students what their expectations were. This includes game conduct, objective in game, and other things of this nature. The game commenced and no the students observed the rules set out for the game. After playing this game for a while she indicated to the students to just listen. The transition included her saying , I have a song for you. Everytime I have observed her introduce a new song she always gives a brief introduction on either origin or function of the song, or story. The song she was introducing was a call-response song called, Dumplins. This song is incredibly simple and includes a MRD pattern. She began explaining that it was a song about someone losing something and having a conversation

between two people. She then sang, and had the students then answer questions about the song. If there was confusion in regards to an answer she would simply sing it again and ask the same question. This usually gave students enough exposure to the material that they would correctly be able to answer. For this song she would have the students sing the MRD response to her sung question. Then respond. This song eventually becomes a game where a student needs to figure out what student has gone missing. While she was teaching this lesson she had the students take away the words and sing on a neutral syllable in order for the students to recognize the MRD pattern. She would ask them if anything sounded similar. This technique seemed to be effective each time. After having played the game a few times the lesson came to an end. The closure portion of the lesson would be different depending on the lesson. If she were rote teaching it she would ask them to sing the song by themselves, or even in a round. If it were a listening lesson the sections would be reviewed by her asking the students to proclaim the sections. In the case of the game it did not have much closure; she ended it when she felt that it was ready to end.