Keene State College

Music Department
Teacher Candidate Assessment of Performance (TCAP)
MU 475/476 Music Student Teaching

STRAND 3: Instructing Students and Supporting Student Learning

OVERVIEW

During weeks 4-5, student teachers will teach their learning segment involving 3-5 lessons. Student
teachers will bring a device to the host school to video record each lesson from a stationary location
(see ‘Videotape Guidelines’ below). The cooperating teacher may be in the classroom during this time
either observing or assisting individual students with the activity and skill development as appropriate.
Submit 2-3 video clips that display the selected focus area/skill/learning segment along with the
‘Instructing Students and Supporting Student Learning’ commentary.

Purpose

The Instructing Students & Supporting Learning Strand provides evidence of your ability to:

 Actively engage students in their own understanding of specific musical skills and
strategies used in performing, creating, analyzing, describing, or understanding music

 Monitor student learning during instruction and respond to student questions, comments,
and needs

Videotape Guidelines

 Before you videotape, ensure that you have the appropriate permission from the
parents/guardians of your students and from adults that appear on the videotape.

 Provide 2-3 video clips of no more than fifteen minutes total. Select clip(s) that
demonstrate how you engage students in learning specific musical skills and problem
solving strategies used in performing, creating, analyzing, describing, or
understanding music. The clip(s) should include interactions among you and your
students and your responses to student comments, questions, and needs.
/
 A video clip should be continuous and unedited, with no interruption in the events. If
you elect to use two clips, they should portray key events that cannot be portrayed in
a fifteen-minute clip.

 The clip(s) can feature either the whole class or a small group of students.

 Both you and your students should be visible and clearly heard on the video submitted.

 Remember to have the appropriate permission from the parents/guardians of your

students and from adults that appear on the videotape.
Instructing Students and Supporting Learning Commentary

Write a commentary that addresses the following prompts. You can address each prompt
separately, through a holistic essay, or a combination of both, as long as all prompts are
addressed. Each bolded overarching question corresponds to a rubric that will be used to
assess the depth and quality of your responses.

TOPIC A:

Insert Link to Video Clips HERE: https://youtu.be/NZiM5gm9ruE

TOPIC B:

Introduction to Video Clips

1. Provide any information needed to interpret the events and interactions in the video clips.
 Each clip is the middle of the class. Two days started with an exam, and the bingo day
began with a small review on ToneSaavy.com

Be sure to include:

a. Where the video clips fall in the learning segment (3-5 lesson progression).
i. Clip 1 falls in the middle of the lesson on day 1, which involved playing
a review game of interval bingo.
ii. Clip 2 shows the middle of the lesson, which started with an exam on
intervals, and then we went into the beginning of the triad unit.
iii. Clip 3 shows the middle of class right before we went over homework. I
allowed for test corrections at the beginning of class and that’s what they
were doing.
b. What the video clips show.
i. Clip 1 was during the interval bingo game.
ii. Clip 2 was the beginning of the triad unit, right after they took their
interval exam.
iii. Clip 3 was during test corrections of the previous exam.
c. What occurred immediately prior to and after the video clips that is important to know in
order to understand and interpret the interactions between and among you and your
students. Put the clip in to context for the observer.
i. Clip 1: Before the clip, the class did some review of their intervals on
ToneSaavy.com. They had struggled with this prior to this class, thus
making a need for me to change my original lesson plans.
ii. Clip 2: Immediately prior to the clip was the second interval exam, which
was required after the students completely failed the first one we gave.
We had to do many more review lessons after that to make sure they
understood enough to move on.
iii. Clip 3: We had done some test corrections on this exam prior to this clip.
d. How, if at all, this video clips differ from your lesson plans. Teachers need to be reactive
to students’ responses; therefore, adjustments to or diversions from the original lesson
are acceptable.
i. Clip 1: This clip went exactly as I had written in my lesson plan.
ii. Clip 2: This clip went very differently than my lesson plan went. Once we
deemed that they were ready to move on, we ultimately overrode my
new lesson plans, added an exam, and went back to using my old lesson
plans about the triads.
 iii. Clip 3: The only thing that was different from this lesson plan were the
test corrections we had to do in order to get the students to fully pass
the exam.
e. What prerequisite knowledge, skills, thinking and/or understanding were necessary for
students to engage in the instruction in the video clips?
i. All clips: Prior knowledge needed to engage were the knowledge of how
to use their resources (keyboard to count half steps, staff to find the
quantity of the interval), and the basics of intervals, which they learned
prior to my arrival (quantity, quality, major, minor, augmented,
diminished)
f. Any routines or working structures of the class (i.e. group work roles, class discussion
norms, participation strategies) that were operating in the learning task(s) seen in the
video clips.
i. The normal routine of the class is the students begin by moving the
whiteboard table to the middle of the room, and doing something on
ToneSaavy.com to get their brains going and to get them focused on the
tasks of the day. Once the pledge is said and the moment of silence is
over, we begin with the lesson of the day. At the end of the block, the
students move the table back where it goes.
g. Any other information you think is important.

TOPIC C:

How does the candidate actively engage students in their own understanding of specific
musical skills and strategies used in performing, creating, analyzing, describing, or
understanding music?

2. Provide examples from the video clips (with minute markers) of the ways in which:

a. You engaged students in learning specific musical skills and problem solving strategies
used in performing, creating, analyzing, describing, or understanding music.
i. 5:06 – I begin to explain to the class the basics of triads; what they’re
comprised of and how they can figure out the difference between major
and minor.
ii. 10:55 – I explain to a student again how to figure out the distance
between intervals and how to find the quality of an intervals using the
piano drawing to count the half steps.
b. Your instructional strategies accommodated student characteristics, learning needs,
and/or language needs.
i. 10:55 – I explain many times to this student how to find the answers
shes looking for regarding intervals, as she doesn’t entirely understand
what it is we are trying to do. This is something I have to do all the time
with each of these students in order to make sure they don’t rush through
things, and that they double check their answers.

TOPIC D:

How does the candidate monitor student learning during instruction and respond to
student questions, comments, and needs?

3. Provide examples from the video clips of the ways in which:

a. You monitored student understanding by eliciting student verbal or musical responses

that require thinking.
 i. 6:25 - I ask a student the specific details of an answer she gave me. She
said thirds, so I asked (what kind of thirds?) to make sure she
understood exactly what I was looking for.
ii. 9:00 – A student tries to jump ahead by asking about the fifth seen in a
triad, but I told her that while she was right, that there are fifths involved,
we were only going to be focusing on the thirds for now. This was to
make sure she didn’t get ahead of the knowledge she needed at the
moment as to not overload her.
b. Students responded that indicated their progress toward accomplishing the lesson’s
learning objectives.
i. 10:55 – The more times we went over the methods used in finding the
right answers, the more she understood. Granted, this student was still
struggling, but she understood way more after I went over the concept
with her a few more times. I eventually had to stop because we had to
move on as a class.
c. You built on students’ input to guide improvement of skills and understanding of musical
elements.
i. 5:06 – I ask students about things they may already have knowledge of,
such as “what does Tri mean?” or “knowing this, how many notes are in
a triad?” Their answers guide me into whether or not we should move
on.

TOPIC E: Academic Language

How does the candidate identify the language demands of learning tasks and
assessments relative to the students’ current levels of academic language proficiency?
How do the candidate’s planning, instruction, and assessment support academic
language development?

4. Given the academic language abilities of your students as described in the Contextualizing
Strand, provide examples of language supports seen in the clips that help your students
understand the content and/or academic language (i.e. music terminology, symbolic notation,
and other music techniques) central to the lesson.
a. Overall through these clips, there is a lot of repetition. The Contextualizing
strand did not have any accommodations marked, as none of my student have
any sort of diagnoses. The most I can do in this case is review these concepts
over and over again to make sure that they understand.

*** Please self-assess your Strand 3 submission using the rubrics below.
Type the level that best represents your work for these areas:

4. Level 3
5. Level 2