Elementary General Music Field Experience

On October 20th I had the opportunity to observe the second grade music class. The teacher for this class was a substitute so the structure and activities were slightly different than usual. When all of the kids came into the classroom they sat in a circle on a rug with the alphabet and each student picked a letter to designate as their spot for that class. Once all of the kids were settled the teacher played a video that described the differences between major and minor keys. After watching this the teacher asked what defines a major key. The students used words like “happy” and “smiley face” to describe what they felt when listening to a piece in a major key. When the teacher asked what described a minor key, the students used descriptors such as “sad” and “thunderstorms”.

After the students were able to share their understanding of what they learned in the video the teacher had them participate in a drawing exercise. The teacher played a well-known piece of classical music and asked the students to draw something that depicted the mood of the piece that was in either a major or minor key. For major keys students drew pictures of spring weather or smiley faces. When the students listened to a piece in a minor key a lot of them drew scenes with rainy weather, or pictures of scary things. The students had a bit of difficulty staying quiet and sitting still for this activity, but they enjoyed sharing their drawings with the class. After the activity the teacher showed the students a small harp and they were asked to come up one at a time and strum different strings to produce either a major or minor chord. After a student played a chord, the class was asked to identify whether it was major or minor. Not all of the students were able to participate in strumming the instrument. Since the activity ended a few minutes before the class period was over, the teacher asked students to share their plans for the weekend. The students really enjoyed sharing and participating in the class.

​Overall, I did like the activity. I think it helped to expand the students creativity by not giving them as many guidelines for what to draw about how they felt about the music they listened to. However, I wish that there was more of a kinesthetic aspect to the activity since a lot of the time the students had to sit still for the activity. This activity would have been good for maybe a slightly older grade, but it wasn’t necessarily age appropriate for second grade.  I think it would have been helpful to give each of the students a small instrument to make a major or minor chord with instead of having a few students play on one instrument for the whole class. I really enjoyed this field experience and I learned a lot about what a general music class in an elementary school should look like.

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