School Choirs

In my last few placements, I have taken the opportunity to participate in various after-school/extra-curricular activities in the school community.  For most of these, I have volunteered my time in the arts in some way, such as in drama productions and choirs.

I really enjoy assisting music teachers in primary and junior choirs for multiple reasons.  For each one thus far, I have participated as the pianist, and this has allowed me an extreme close up of the talented singers and musicians at many schools I have been at.  I have also lead vocal and choir warm ups, offered suggestions and encouragement, helped to lead sectionals and canons, and offered any extra assistance to the music director.  For one school, I was able to accompany the students to a school board wide festival and watch these talented students sing in front of a large audience and an adjudicator.  It was an incredible experience.

I hope that in my career as an educator, I will willingly take upon the challenge of creating and maintaining a choir for young singers.  I have learned many strategies and techniques along the way which I believe will help me in my endeavors. I truly believe that student's lives can be enriched through positive opportunities to perform, sing as a group, and work collaboratively for a common musical purpose.  There is so much that can be done with either a few select students, or a wide number of members.  In any case, I have great plans to allow students at my school the chance to sing, sing, sing as often as possible and in various formats.

For your listening pleasure, this is a recording of a choir singing "On the Back of an Eagle", written by Nancy Telfer.  I accompanied my last practicum choir on the piano with this song and they really enjoyed singing it. The recording is not of a choir that I was with, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.  Children's voices are so precious!

On The Back of an Eagle

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

-Red Auerbach

How the Gimquat Found Her Song

Several weeks ago, I took the opportunity to attend a children's performance presented by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.  The presentation, titled "How the Gimquat Found Her Song", was a beautiful blend of dramatic and musical elements suited for a young audience.  When I watched the show, there were hundreds of elementary-aged students in attendance and it was obvious that they were delighted to be there.  The energy in the concert hall was very evident as the children sang along, reacted to the special effects and lighting, and applauded loudly at the conclusion of the show.

There were only 2 actors in the show, but the animation of these characters and the intensity that they brought to the stage made you think you were observing a full cast of actors!  The Gimquat was trying to find her song (as a bird), and with the help of the wizard, they traveled through time to see which genre of music best suited her voice.  As the characters arrived in various eras of time, the symphony orchestra accompanied and set the mood for the show exquisitely. We explored Gregorian chant, medieval songs from the 1300s, Bach, Mozart with opera, Berlioz and Brahms in a scary forest, jazz and rap, and finally the bird found her song in nature - the most organic form of music.

While the majority of the audience were under the age of 12, there was a section devoted to teachers and future teachers (like me!). Sitting in my seat before the show began, a woman approached us to show us the Study Guide that is meant to go along with the show.  She offered me a free copy and I have thoroughly enjoyed looking through and exploring this wonderful resource.  Along with a DVD and a CD, the booklet is complete with lesson plans for grades K-5, big ideas, strategies, and information on the music. A portion of a full orchestral score and flash cards suitable for the classroom are also included.  It has been a fantastic resource and I cannot wait to use it more in my classroom.

Barbara Coloroso

I am currently reading Barbara Coloroso's book "Kids are Worth It" and am finding myself truly inspired by her philosophies. Coloroso is a parenting expert whom I first learned of from a family member who had collected some of her books.  Since then, I have continually heard of Coloroso in my Early Childhood Education and Primary/Junior Education classes.  She is a fantastic author with personable, relevant ideas to help any parent today (even though the book was originally written decades ago).

Although her ideas stem from parenting, it is amazing how much is relevant to teachers and educators.  As usually discussed in my classes at school, teachers / parents usually fall under three types:

1) The Brick Wall parent/teacher - it's 'my way or the highway' and I rule the house/classroom.
2) The Jellyfish parent/teacher - anything goes, whenever, wherever, the kids do whatever because I just want them to be happy
3) The Backbone parent/teacher - provides structure while remaining flexible to circumstances and situations.

I believe we should all strive to be Backbone parents/ teachers.  It is understood that children need structure, support, discipline, and guidance and they will look to the adults in charge for those cues.  It is also important to understand that independence, allowing for children to be critical thinkers and permitting them to question things at times requires flexibility by the authority figure.  It is so critical for us as parents and educators to be both: provide a safe environment for children to feel safe and secure and to take risks, while also providing routines and structures that are beneficial to the family, classroom, and child.

I can hope that as I continue to read more writings by this fabulous author I will continue to establish my beliefs about parenting and teaching in a positive, realistic, and optimistic way.

Documentation in the Classroom

During my visits this term to a kindergarten room in Toronto, I was able to observe some excellent teaching by a wonderful educator.  While there, I balanced my time between making observations in my handy notebook, video taping important events, and playing with the wonderful children in the class.

The videos and photos that I took cannot be posted on the internet, but let me assure you that I learned a lot from these and have had the chance to go back and review them many times.  I was especially observing the use of music in this classroom and the teacher certainly gave me lots to record and observe.

In my notebook, I kept detailed notes of conversations children had, events of the day, instructions and routines done by the teacher, and other things I found inspiring or interesting about the classroom. 

These various forms of observations and recording reminds me a lot about the Reggio Emilia approach to education and the effective use of documentation.  I can clearly see how proper documentation can be very helpful in assessment, curriculum planning, and observing development among students in the class.  I learned so much about these young people in the short few weeks I visited because I took detailed notes and documented important (and sometimes not important!) events.  The conversations I was able to listen to and scribe really proved to me where the students' cognitive skills, social and emotional skills, and academic skills are and what next steps to take to further scaffold the child.  I plan to use documentation in my career as I now see the great benefit and use it can be for teachers everywhere.

Gender Equity

I was privileged to have been able to attend the annual "Reading for the Love of It" conference in February and take part in a surplus of incredible workshops and speakers. One workshop that especially resonated with me was conducted by Larry Swartz, an incredible teacher who works at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto. Swartz specializes in drama and the arts and has written incredible resources for teachers to use to incorporate drama into everyday experiences of young children.

Swartz's presentation at the conference was not about drama this time, but was on gender equality.  He provided a large list of wonderful children's books which blur the lines between genders and open up possibilities for exploration and discussion in the classroom in terms of gender differences and equality.  His knowledge on this topic and simple explanations on what gender equality really is and how it is in the classroom in conscious and unconscious ways really opened my eyes to this topic in ways I had never seen before.

I am so lucky to have this incredible list of magnificent children's books which promote gender equality and being true to oneself.

He talked about a book called My Princess Boy and you can view more information about how this book was created here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DnbjtXDlv0&feature=related

The list of books is found below.

Speaking Bubbles for Empathy

The series of lessons that I implemented in my first practicum allowed the students to have various of opportunities to learn about the character development trait of the month, empathy.  This is a rather difficult topic for young students to sometimes grasp based on the abstract idea of the meaning. Through drama, visual arts, literacy, and social studies, we were able to explore empathy in a variety of ways and students demonstrated their learning of empathy both in lessons, and in their day-to-day relationships with their peers.

One lesson which I conducted involved paired students to create thinking or speaking bubbles for characters they saw in a picture.  They had to create sentences for each person or animal to demonstrate what that person might be feeling - whether it is the person who is hurt or the one showing empathy.  These grade one students surpassed my expectations and were able to clearly demonstrate what empathy looks and sounds like through this activity.

"It looks like you need a hug?"
"I had a rough day."

"I am sad."

"I can tell you are upset."

I am grateful that these students were able to learn something about empathy and express ideas and create sentences based on simple photos.  Additionally, while on yard duty, I continually reminded the students in my class especially to practice empathy and to help their friends when necessary, and also look at positive forms of empathy including encouragement and positive praise.

Observing in Class

Observations as a student teacher come in very handy for multiple purposes.  By simply watching interactions in the classroom, listening to student conversations, and observing how a teacher teaches can be extremely beneficial and helpful.  In my undergraduate degree in Early Childhood Education, an entire course was exclusively to learn how to observe and what to observe as a teacher.  This course helped me learn how to take effective notes, what to look and listen for that are worthy for note-taking, and the importance and power that can come through effective observation.

This week I had the opportunity to observe my Associate Teacher of my grade 3 / 4 practicum class teach a lesson to the students in math. I took the opportunity to record important information that I found useful in teaching math, and also what her students are used to in regards to math language, what they know, etc.

My notes included the following:

-Look at patterning to find answers
-Use student participation (colour in on the overhead)
-Use math language (ie. "congruent")
-Point out useful information in the question, hints on the page
     - Explain what symbols mean
-Models how to use pictures, numbers, and words to show thinking
-Points out bold letters as key features of the problem
-Physically counts and shows thinking by talking aloud
-Involves students through questioning (ie. "What do I do next?" and "Why do I have to do that?")
-Models how to form a full, complete sentence in the answer (combining literacy and math)
-Uses manipulatives as necessary to help solve the question
-Includes multiplication whenever possible (connection to current math topic and student's thinking expectations)


I am fortunate to have an amazing associate teacher who knows exactly her students' needs and how to help them each achieve success. I am looking forward to more observations in the future with her teaching.

Area, Perimeter and Grids

The practicum that I am currently completing is in a combined class of grade 3s and 4s.  I have taken a liking to teaching math nearly everyday in the class, and feel confident with the lessons and ideas thus far.  The unit we are doing is on Area, Perimeter, and Grids, and after a few introductory lessons I decided to make it life-sized and create a giant grid on the large carpet in the classroom.

The morning they saw the carpet they were like kids on Christmas morning!  They were really excited to experience it and math lessons have been so fantastic so far.  They are really grasping the concepts of area, grids, and perimeter and I'm looking forward to doing more lessons with it this week.

As a bonus on Friday afternoon during free play period, I organized a game of Battleship using the carpet grid and it turned out very successful.  The students LOVED playing and found it to be a very exciting game.  

Lessons are just so much more fun with hands-on and concrete learning.  I'm so glad this is going so well.