Note: School name has been changed to maintain confidentiality. Cayenne Music Night is an event created to expose the elementary school students of Cayenne ES to different kinds of music and allow them to play with it outside of their regular class. Students, along with their parents, can come to enjoy a fun night of music making with the help of activities designed by JMU Music Education Students. For Cayenne Music Night, my partner, Theresa Perez, and I designed and led a musical experience for Kindergarten students based on National Core Art Anchor Standard #8: Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work. The first step of designing our experience for Cayenne Music Night was planning the activity we wanted to do that would help the students understand what it means to interpret intent and meaning in artistic work. After brainstorming and collaborating with Theresa, we developed a one paragraph description of what we wanted (see below). Of course, this description was rough around the edges and included more activities than we actually did that night. Dr. Stringham commented on description and had us choose more appropriate wording for the setting and the audience; some words that he pointed out were associating major with happy and sad with minor. His comments made me realize the importance of choosing my words wisely to accurately reflect what I am trying to accomplish. After the description, we made a rough draft of handout (see below) that we wanted to give the students and their parents so that they could remember what we did, understand the importance and reasoning behind the activity, and have activities to take home if they wanted to replicate it. Again, Dr. Stringham gave us comments and said that our paper was not that family friendly and easily accessible to read for parents and kids. It made sense once I looked at it again; our handout looked more like a college assignment than a fun worksheet with pictures that I would give a child. Then we turned in our final draft of the handout (see below) which included colorful pictures, fun fonts, and words that were not as dense and convoluted as before. We also created a video of how we thought the experience would go and what we expected the students to do. Here is a picture of our materials all set up that night! Our engagements were successful in that the kindergarten students were eager to play with our activity and see how pressing the buttons produced different loops of music. The kids were also willing to answer our questions about what they felt when they heard each song, how it related to the picture, and which loop they thought fit with the picture the best. Sometimes is would take more encouragement and persistence for them to answer, but for on other occasions the child would be ecstatic to talk about it. One thing I quickly realized when working with this age was I had to be more specific and guiding with the questions I asked to help the students reach the point where they understood emotions and could articulate it. It meant giving them options of “Did you feel happy or sad?” rather than “How did you feel?” (more open ended). It was cool that I knew some of the children’s names because I had been helping out in a kindergarten classroom in Keister this past semester. It gave me a connection to them and helped me start conversations more easily; it was also fun and interesting to meet their parents and get a glimpse into their background.
One challenge that was especially prominent when it came to meaningful engagement with students and their families was the language barrier. Cayenne Elementary School has such a diverse environment, so when I was giving handouts to parents and trying to explain, some of them would nod and say yes, but I did not know if they actually understood what I was explaining or were just saying yes because they did not have any other method to communicate with me. And if the case was that they did not understand me, the handout would probably not be important to them because they could not even read it! Another challenge was that the parents of the kindergarten students stood off to the sides of the room while the children played. I was wondering why no handouts were being taken initially, and then I realized I had to go initiate a conversation and give the handout to the parents because the kindergarten students were not going to take them. It made me sad that the parents were not playing with their children; maybe this was because they wanted the student to learn and enjoy without them or in a classroom setting they are used to the teacher teaching and themselves sitting on the sidelines. However, some parents were really engaged with the material and came and asked questions. If I had to revise my experience, I would use more laptops so that all the pictures could be more spread out, accessible, and available to more people at one time. I would also create a more complex program so that it would be possible to press one button and have a list of songs to switch through, rather than a separate button per song. Doing this would help eliminate the confusion of all the chords. I also would like to come prepared with better instruction and questions; for example, I would have the students just touch the metal of the alligator clip to the aluminum foil rather than having them hold it in one hand and touch it with the other because they did not seem to grasp the concept. Lastly, I would create an experience where the students and parents can interact together. I want the parents to be engaged with their students’ learning so that they can take it home and help foster growth because the home is extremely important in supporting a child’s learning. Comments are closed.
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Davina MiawOn this page, I will present examples of my leadership through videos, lesson plans, and reflections. Archives
December 2019
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