Phil Kleven Week 3

What a great week! I'm feeling very confident in the classroom, and I had a great chance to test my skills as a teacher. My cooperating teacher was gone for two days, and I was completely in charge of the high school and middle school students. Teaching was very good this week. My instructional strategies are really working, and I'm connecting well with the students. I'm finally starting to learn some of their names too! My cooperating teacher demonstrated many positive instructional strategies, and she encouraged me to really push the higher performing ensembles. As we get to know each other better, I'm becoming more comfortable picking apart their sound and have higher expectations in general. For example, my third hour high school class is performing two concertos with student soloists. For these pieces, there are wind and brass players who come over from band to join the orchestra. Since these musicians are not with the orchestra everyday, I don't have a chance to address issues during each class. This week I set higher expectations for them and spent more time demonstrating sounds that I expected. My own performances are certainly helping the ensemble develop a concept of the sounds we need to produce.

This week was also great for new ideas and strategies. Since each of my classes have students that perform at drastically different levels, I have to adjust my instruction for each group. I learned that my first hour class needs to hear exactly what I want them to do, either in clear instructions, or by my own performance of the music. For second hour (intermediate orchestra) I learned that I should use a mixture of explanations and performance. Students in this class respond to both performance and verbal instructions. My third hour class (advanced orchestra) doesn't need me to play any musical examples for them (even though I would like to). They respond well to verbal instructions. I believe that many of the third hour students perform in outside youth orchestras, which generally perform at a very high level.

In the week ahead, I hope to learn more about the effectiveness of my teaching. My cooperating teacher has been taking many videos of me, which is eye opening. I am able to analyze every gesture, pause, and inflection in my speaking and conducting. I also hope to get more opinions about my teaching from the high school students. I've been asking many of them what they like about my teaching, and what they would like to see me do. The students are honest, and the feedback is great. We all have the same goal (February concert), and if I can get direct student feedback, we will be even stronger as a group.

Standard Connection:
This week, I chose to focus on standard 3 - planning for differentiated instruction - The competent teacher plans and designs instruction based on content-area knowledge, diverse student characteristics, student performance date, curriculum goals, and the community context. The teacher plans for ongoing student growth and achievement. I've brushed up on all pedagogical strategies for orchestra, and am refining my teaching methods for the different instruments. We are working towards our February concert, and planning for daily rehearsal is key at this point in our learning. I've targeted a few students with specific musical needs, and have been working with them on an individual and small-group basis. I know this will help us perform our best in the concert!

Goals for next week:
- Further refine my rehearsal strategies
- Learn even more student names
- Find more ways to connect with students (found a few students who also play hockey this week. They were shocked that I play)