I designed this lesson plan as a hypothetical unit for a typical middle school orchestra. The repertoire piece chosen is the 1812 overture arranged by Carrie Lane Gruselle.  

This is an excerpt from one of the pieces from the pre-assessment concert in which I was able to conduct two pieces. 

Disclaimer: All students consented to be recorded in both videos. 

I designed this unit based on the piece "Fantasia Espanola" by Soon He Newbold. My plan was to break down rhythms and techniques in the piece by creating the rhythm exercises handout. I used finale to create the handout and took the harder rhythms from the piece. The students started by singing the rhythms, clapping, playing on open strings, strumming pizzicato, and col lengo techniques. In the end, I had them only work up till measure 101 to focus on mastering more of the piece in 3 lessons. It did not go as well as I hoped it did, but it was a learning experience for me as a teacher. 

For this project, I observed two students in two different orchestra classes. Student A has an IEP and student B has a 504 plan. I was able to look at each of their case files and speak to them individually to see what accomodations work best in the orchestra class so I was able to help them succeed in the most effective way.  

I had the opportunity to participate in the JMU club orchestra during my time at JMU. I was able to be on the executive membership board for the club for four semesters. I helped to plan concerts, pick the repertoire, and conduct in rehearsals and concerts. This experience helped to prepare me for teaching in a class setting. 

For this project I had a volunteer JMU student that did not have an instrumental music background participate in learning to play bassoon. 

I had the opportunity to conduct a local high school orchestra playing an arrangement of the Bach Brandenburg Concerto. The students were sight reading the piece. However, the notes weren't too difficult for their level of playing so my goal was to focus on articulation, style, and dynamics. The students responded well and my professor was able to give some constructive feedback for the rehearsal. 

For this experience, my group and I wanted to do an event that was catered towards younger children. We decided to contact the local library to see if there were any events where we could set up a table for our experience. After coordinating with the youth services coordinator through email, we were able to participate in the 90th anniversary event. 
Since we were designing this experience for a large event and for young children, we wanted to keep the objectives simple and easy to follow along. This semester in 371 we talked a bit about classroom management. We had to take into consideration that since we were in the same room as several other stations it would be very fast paced and lots of children would be constantly rotating through. 
During the event, all of the children were engaged in making the shakers and they all enjoyed making sounds. Some students were more engaged in learning the rhythms than others. The younger children wanted to make their own rhythms and sounds and the older children were able to follow along with the lesson more easily. 
I learned a lot from this experience about organizing a music lesson for an event outside of a public school. It was nice to engage with the community in a more informal setting. 

I was able to participate as an assistant teacher for the instrument familiarization class for vocal music education majors. For the two week section on string instruments, I developed lesson plans for beginning instruction on string instruments. The goal was to help each student in the class be able to have basic proficiency and familiarization with their assigned string instrument. It was a challenge to teach all of the basic concepts of playing in 4 class periods. To do this I had to ensure that all students were staying on task during the class period. I also wanted to ensure that all students were enjoying the experience and creating a positive environment to learn despite the time constraints. I wanted to be sure that each student understood that mistakes are part of the process and to have achievable goals for the time allotted.  In this "crash course" in string instrument technique my first objective was to focus on how to hold the instrument and the bow. Then build on that by starting to play with pizzicato before playing arco. Since I was working with college music students all of them were able to read music proficiently and have an idea of intonation. My goal was to not have everyone play perfectly but to have a basic understanding of where first position on their assigned instrument.