Michael Parker

MUED 380
Jesse Rathgeber
12/8/16
Practicum #6 Teaching Reflection
For my last practicum experience, I had the opportunity to co-teach
with Ms. Grace Dingus during the class period. Ms. Dingus and I wanted to
test out a new game that we had just learned in our Elementary Methods
class and see what it was like in a real elementary school classroom. While
we both thought that the teaching, overall, was a success, it would not have
been nearly as successful without the help of our practicum teacher.
We had an easy time transitioning out of the class warm-up and into
our first activity because the students usually practice rhythm syllables
during their warm-up. After we did our short opening with rhythm syllables,
we then moved into our game of 4 behind. Ms. Dingus and I demonstrated
for the class, who all noticed the echo but did not fully understand the
stagger of 4 beats between the two sides. After a few rounds with the
students participating, they caught on surprisingly fast and were eager to try
their hand at leading the exercise.
The final part of our teaching is where we ran into the most
complications. When we played the pass the rhythm game in our
Elementary Methods class, it was much easier, obviously, since we were
dealing with college-aged musicians. The elementary school students,
however, had a much harder time grasping the concept of passing the
rhythm and immediately turning around to receive the next rhythm. The
students would either forget to turn back around or would rush through
clapping their rhythm to the next person as to turn back around sooner.
Mrs. Miragliotta had a great suggestion that we break the class up into
three lines and have them pass the rhythms from line to line, working as a
team to both receive and pass rhythms. She told us that she does
something very similar with her choir but instead passes solfege from line to

line. This made Ms. Dingus and I remember to take a step back to an
attainable step, when needed, in order to ensure success at some level for
the students.