intasc 8
STANDARD 8: Instructional Strategies
The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.
Standard 8 encourages the teacher to vary their teaching style to provide the best education for their students. In music, there are many styles that can be used during the course of a day to allow students the best opportunities to learn. For instance, a music teacher is an instructor for the beginning stages of learning a piece, a coach when the going gets rough, and an audience member when its time to perform. A deep understanding of content areas may be invoked in students by asking higher levels of questions that require more thought. To effectively use the standard, teachers must be willing to take on multiple hats, and use whatever resources available to provide as many connections to their content area as possible. Included in being flexible, a teacher should be able to promote environments of communication, where their students are engaged in discussion about a concept and are able to view it in many ways.
I am in the beginning stages of mastering Standard 8. The idea of a teaching taking on many roles to attack teaching at multiple angles is something I believe I have attempted but only scratched the surface. In my lessons I have acted as the instructor in the beginning. Being that the lessons are only ten minutes in length, the peer teachings involve acting as an instructor of the piece for the majority of the time. Toward the end of the lesson, I ask the students to sing by themselves with little to no help from me. This shows the students' overall understanding of the song, but it also allows me as a teacher to be an audience member and give the students a chance to shine on their own. Engaging students in meaning activities and complex thought is the area of Standard 8 in which I can show the most improvement. As is relates to music, engaging in meaningful activities might mean challenging students with more difficult syllable translations. It could also mean giving the students time to think about the emotional or societal contexts of a piece.
To master Standard 8, classes outside of the music department like Human Growth and Development and Educational Psychology will be extremely beneficial. Standard 8 involves a deeper understanding of content so a deeper understanding of people would help in communicating complex thoughts and ideas. I think an important part of teaching music is going beyond the notes on the page. Music is about people and life and therefore music should be taught, learned, performed and experience with the those things in mind. Practicing being able to communicate complex thoughts will be important in my development of the skill. Attending educational conferences to gain experience in this type of learning would also aid the mastery of this standard.
MUSE 353
Teaching Strategies are a central part of what makes a teacher great. A good teacher has many strategies that fit different situations. It is important for a teacher to take on many roles depending on what the students need. Strategies refer to the actual processes of communication that the teacher implements in the classroom. A balance of many types of communication modes is essential for engagement. Strategies should be varied and specific to the students being taught. For example, adolescents are social beings and often need time to talk to their friends and be themselves. A great way to give students a chance to let loose for a moment is through structured socialization. Structured socialization is the practice of giving students of few moments of class time to talk to them people around them. This strategy not only breaks up the flow of class and gives the students a break, but also allows the students to foster relationships and talk about the material being discussed. The older students get, the need for structured socialization goes down, at any age the strategy can be useful. Another effective strategy for teaching adolescents is to use problem based learning. It can be shown that students are more interested and retain information more effectively if the content is discovered through solving problems. Many students will not be engaged if asked to listen to a five-minute orchestral work. However, if they are given a problem to solve, or something to listen for in the piece, they will be more likely to stay engaged. Further teaching strategies could involve work sheets, group work, or the use of technology. Again, the knowledge that adolescents learn best through problem solving can be used in the other mediums. Giving students a problem to solve in groups allows students to engage in complex thought problems with their peers. It is necessary for the teacher to understand the levels of thought that will be done in each of the activities and structure each lesson to promote complex thinking skills and a thorough understanding of the content. Behavior in the middle school classroom can be an issue but not if dealt with properly. In situations where students are acting out it is important to keep a cool head and not engage the student in a hostile manner. If the student is not participating correctly in a performance setting, for example, they should be taken out of the activity for a few minutes or perhaps for one or two repetitions of the music. The student should always be given another chance. It is likely that a student will behave after the first time he or she is addressed in front of the whole class. Of course, further action may be needed such as having the student stand near the teacher or removing them from the activity for a longer period of time.
MUSE 375
This course allowed me to develop in this standard through serval readings about rehearsal strategies and lesson making. It is vital to understand the age group and learning needs of the students you are teaching. I was given the chance to develop my teaching strategies through two micro teachings and several field teachings. The field teachings forced me to come up with varying ways to go about teaching the same concepts. I had to go down to the fundamentals of playing the instrument in many cases. I used a variety of analogies and ways to think about tone productions to get students to play with a characteristic sound. Below is a summary and reflection over the readings.
MUSE 355
String Methods taught me a great deal about teaching students in a variety of ways. I got the opportunity to teach a wide ranges of ages and had to figure out how to make string techniques relevant to everyone. A major tool for developing my skills in string teaching was the String Pedagogy Handbook (a link to which can be found on the INTASC Standard 1 page). I came up with several ways to teach the same string technique. It is important to teach the same concept in many different ways because all students learn different. What may work for some students may not work for others. Another big thing I learned from the class was the use of figurative language. This can be used as an engagement tool as well as a teaching strategy to give students many ways to think about a concept. Instead of describing exactly how to play staccato, saying to "pretend you are touching a hot stove" presents a different imagery to students which allows them to think abstractly about playing. Using figurative language such as this will mean that more students and learning styles are able to be reached.
