“Ready Steady Off You Go”

Last semester I joined the Junior Academy of Music (JAM) at QUB, a place to teach young people to study music. It is easy to be a “Big student” sitting with children, helping teachers build the atmosphere, or checking test answers. I thought it will be easy to teach something old just like being the “big student”.

One day, when the teacher Sam ask me to carry a part of the class which is teaching a game called “double-double”. I said I’m glad to have a try. It is a good opportunity to show up what I’ve learned in last semester, also Sam will help me walking on the right teaching way.

Double-Double

“double-double this this,

double-double that that,

double this double that,

double-double this that.”

Usually in this part of the game, Sam will lead the children singing two times, then he will take off one, two, or three words. Training children to count beats by themselves. Sometimes Sam will take off the words, other times might take off the tone or the action.

The whole thing is not difficult, so after practiced several times to ensure progress fluency, I went to class confidently.

Description

After Sam introduces me, I show the original style of Double-Double to the children twice. Then I tell them there are three different notes in this song: Do Mi SO and ask them to choose one singing silently. Children are very excited in this part, so I picked three kids to choose the notes which means I repeat this part three times. After that, I tell pupils to choose two notes singing silently. This time I also choose three pupils to pick the notes. Actually, I didn’t think about I will run out of time until Sam told me so. In the end, I tell them I will pick up all three notes sing silently, and ask them to sit down when they finish singing in their head. The scene became a little chaotic. Each student has their own rhythm in their heart, which leads to inconsistent time for everyone to sit down at the end. There were even some students who apparently sat down as soon as they observed others sitting down.

Feelings

Although I prepared several times, I still feel nervous when I say “Ready steady off we go”. Also because of being nervous and afraid of doing something wrong, a lot of my energy is used to make sure that the rhythm of my demonstration is not wrong. I can clearly feel that my aura is not open, I am unnatural and unconfident. On the other hand, when I slowly realized everything I planned, I found that even though it was the first teaching experience, I could express the prepared process smoothly. I thought I would get stuck or not continue for various reasons, and I’m glad that didn’t happen. The children listened carefully to me, and raised their hands enthusiastically during the interactive session, even running out of time. I will feel that if there is a next time, I will have the confidence to continue teaching.

Evaluation

After that class, Sam approached me. He even asked me if it was my first time teaching, and he thought my expression was very fluent. That’s a high rating in my opinion! But he also pointed out my shortcomings. As mentioned in the description, everyone’s rhythm went wrong during the final meditation. The actual reason is actually that I didn’t maintain the rhythm of the prologue well. The phrase “ready steady off you go” is actually an advanced beat for the follow-up piece. This is a detail that I didn’t notice during the rehearsal, which led to such a result. I might feel a little regretful at the time, but now I feel more fortunate. Because of this experience, I will understand what I should pay attention to next time. Another problem is actually the tone of my voice. The children’s intonation is actually higher because they haven’t started to change their voices yet. But because I failed to notice this, my overall speech rate is fast and low. This is actually not very good.

However, I still have to praise myself for being able to go through the entire process of teaching for the first time.

Analysis & Conclusion

In a music teaching book, I learned that several viewpoints can help me improve my teaching level.

In class, devote a little energy to observing yourself, imagine what kind of state you are in the eyes of students, and evaluate yourself. Under such circumstances, I may be able to control my speaking speed and pitch, and at the same time regard myself and the students as a whole, and balance my state of expression with the goal of harmony.

Another very important point is that teaching is a relatively slow process, which includes the teaching of teachers and the absorption of students. Therefore, there is no need to have the idea of ​​”I’m out of time” when teaching, and you can slow down appropriately to guide students to think step by step according to your rhythm. Looking at the mistakes I made again, I think that one of the reasons for my mistakes is that I didn’t realize it, and the other is because I have the idea of ​​wanting to finish teaching quickly, and I didn’t pay attention to the students. I will forgive myself and trust that I will do better teaching next time.

Action Plan

The next time I teach, I will focus on how to express my teaching content in a stable and high-pitched tone, and I will pay attention to “ready steady off you go” as part of the teaching content instead of treating it as ” I’m going to start talking something” to express. I will pay attention to observing myself during the teaching process, tell myself where I am doing well and where I need to improve, and actively seek opinions and suggestions for improvement from my teachers or colleagues.

References

Harris, Paul. Improve Your Teaching! 2006. Faber Music Ltd, 1 Feb. 2017.