Middle School Observation Reflection

I had the opportunity this semester to visit a chorus class at a middle school. For the class I was able to observe, they were working on their production of "The Lion King" for the school concert. The class time was slightly longer compared to other classes I had been to. The rehearsal time for this middle school chorus was over an hour. After the class I was able to talk to the teacher and some days they do tech rehearsals on the stage with the drama teacher. For this class; however, they were rehearsing in the choir room. For the first 20 minutes of the class, there was a focus on breathing and posture exercises.

I noticed that the teacher used a lot of analogies to help the students get more of a visual idea of the concept and technique trying to be taught. The teacher also used non examples. For one of the breathing exercises he had the students do the opposite of the proper technique so they could physically feel the difference between what not to do and what the right technique is. I think both of these processes helped appeal to visual and kinesthetic learners. The students responded well and were able to improve in sound quality from the exercises done at the beginning of class.

​After this, they started to run through the program in concert order. Sometimes the teacher would stop and go over certain spots and work on having the students improve their diction and word clarity and pronunciation. The rest of the class time was primarily spent refining each of the songs. One of the things I noticed most from this observation experience was that the teacher had really good classroom management techniques. Never once during the class did he have to raise his voice to get the students to stay on task. It was apparent that the teacher had established a lot of mutual respect between himself and the students. Sometimes talking and chatting amongst the students would be an issue, but the teacher only had to ask once and the students responded immediately.