Demonstrating Knowledge of Content and Pedagogy

Back in Black

Uptown Girl

The top left document is the arrangement of Billy Joel's Uptown Girl that I created, based on the video to its right.

Bowings are an integral part of how string players make sound. I left the original score intentionally skeletal, with the hopes that students would generate ideas of what to add based on what they knew of the piece. Uptown Girl, after all, was selected by the students!

The benefit of teaching Orchestra is that I get to work with the same students many consecutive years. In fact, I have now worked with the current 5th graders for three years, since they began their instruments! With this wealth of time together, I have a better understanding of their prior knowledge and experience. Thus, below you will see a spread of End-of-Year Solo assignments, all the way from 5th grade to 12th grade. This sheet is the product of collaboration with Ms. Nurkit Lucksom, my own expertise and knowledge of solo string repertoire, and in large part, the selection of that solo by the students from a teacher-provided list.

Setting Instructional Outcomes

The Long Terms Goals above and the High School Rehearsal Calendar below are two manifestations of instructional outcomes. 5th grade Orchestra Long Terms Goals are organized by repertoire, skills, lessons materials, and fun tunes, as well as sectioned into winter and spring time frames. For High School, with all of the concerts occuring in the spring, it was imperative to have a plan for myself, Ms. Lucksom, and the students, to all be aware of. Dates of concerts are placed on the calendar, and that's the easy part! My co-teacher and I have spent many hours going back and forth, readjusting and redefining as needed, to yield the best planned concerts.

Childish Gambino is a popular artist currently. Using the above slide I created, I was able to walk my high school students through improvisation on a differentiated scale. The below image shows a Chrome extension called Transpose, which allows the listener to change the key of the video on their screen. In sum, through my knowledge and collection of resources, I am able to reach students in a different way.

To extend content knowledge

I pride myself on my cello, music theory, and general pedagogical know-how, but I pride myself most in my curiosity and willingness to adapt. This year, the Rockland County Music Educators Association piloted the Contemporary/Jazz All-County festival, appealing to students traditionally left out of the All-County experience. The pictures above show Nanuet students at the festival. The links below are about the director of the Orchestra, Ms. Mimi Rabson. She proved to be a huge inspiration, doing string music in a wholly new way, at least to me! I hope to not only augment my bredth and depth of knowledge of music beyond the Western classical canon, as well as to continue to develop more informal music learning pedagogies.

In 5th grade lessons, we are able to an assortment of activities. Above is the Note Reading Ninja activity and the Assorted Worksheets. My students are particularly fond of the Note Reading Ninja. They start at the beginning of the year using Cheat Sheets, pictured below, and are gradually able to advance to the most difficult level at the bottom. 

In the above slide, the unit is highlighted for the students under Announcements. The week on February 13th, students were reviewing the unit on new finger patterns, as listed. The Warm Up (WU) mentions Jaws. This is the famous theme written by John Williams, from the classic movie. Below you will find a recording of the original theme as well as a greatly simplified version of the notes I've written out for 5th grade. This was a fun way for students to practice an isolated skill, like performing B-flat and E-flat, without it feeling like work.

Performance Assessment is an essential part of creating a technically successful concert performance, in the immediate future and for years to come. To the left, above, is the Performance Assessment rubric, abutted to the right by a sample graded assessment. The feedback will help students in all of their playing, no just for this one assessment. Finally, below is the document which provides the excerpt options for each part. 

What's more, once I've graded the video submissions, I allow for unlimited resubmissions for higher grades. Music is a difficult subject to quantify, so having the specific criteria provided helps students know where to go when a point or two is deducted. Below, you can hear our Spring Concert pieces to see just how difficult they really are!