Week Two

This week was a very tricky one for my students at Banksmeadow -- they had their first go at reading a score. I tried to make it as simple as possible for them to follow with colours, but I also made sure they were exposed to proper musical symbols and terminology.

We started the lesson with Pass the Beat, and then they sat down with the boomwhackers. When I asked them to choose a boomwhacker, I forgot that kids are kids, and will get excited if you offer them a giant colourful pole to whack on the ground, so they all rushed the front of the room to grab the biggest, brightest boomwhacker they could find. I ended up yelling, telling them to go to the back of the room and sit down and scolded them, explaining the importance of taking their time and being safe. I'm really not proud of this, especially since it was my mistake that prompted this behaviour. Their classroom teacher recommended to me that I get them come up in their table groups, which I thought was a really good idea.

I've not been doing very well with anticipating behavioural challenges in class lately which has created problems in my behaviour. I hate yelling at my students and when I fail to anticipate it feels like my teaching suffers, which means my students are getting the support they need.

I'm hoping that next week I can improve on this and also use more of the PBL framework techniques in my lessons.