Where I am, and where I want to go!

Hey friends!

The amount of diversity we will be encountering during our careers as teachers will be outstanding. We will get the chance to work with a plethora of young people who all have unique backgrounds and cultures. This type of diversity also means that we will be working with students who speak English as a second language (ESL). I find myself wondering what are we doing as teachers to ensure that these students are actively engaged and able to cultivate knowledge from lessons that are not in their native tongue. I also asked myself how I can draw from their knowledge and experience and incorporate it into daily lessons that will allow them to share their culture with their peers and myself.  

What I believe I will find with further research is that teachers will supplement verbal communication with kinesthetic gestures and visual cues. Kinesthetic strategies could be used to feel time signatures (4/4 vs. 3/4), clap rhythms, demonstrate phrase shape, learn scale degrees (solfeg), etc.  

Visual images included into daily lessons should help with students ability to connect musical notation and ideas to something visual. Visuals can also be used to help with lyrics to songs and lessons about music from other cultures. 

ESL Through Music

ESL Music Games

Using Music in the ESL Classroom

Mus. Ed. in growth of cultural openness

These links do not all discuss ESL learners in the music classroom specifically but rather they address how music is used in an ESL classroom to help facilitate learning. These resources will help me identify strategies that I may use in my own teaching to help engage those students who do not speak English as their first language. The classroom is becoming more and more diverse in the variety of ethnic backgrounds it's students come from. This reason alone means that there is a constantly increasing need for teachers to have strategies for teaching to those students who may have the ability to learn via verbal communication. 

Welcome to My Blog

Hey everyone!
My name is Allison. I am currently in my fifth (and hopefully last!) year in the choral and general music education program at UW-Milwaukee and will be student teaching in the spring. I grew up in Racine, WI and had a ton of great experiences with music, so much so that I knew in middle school that I wanted to teach music.
When I first started my college career I thought for sure I was going to come out teaching high school choir simply because my best experiences with music were during those years. I sang in multiple choirs, including show choir (this link is to a video of my fav performance my show choir did, just for fun if you're interested). I got to travel and have fun with my closest friends.
About mid-way through college, after doing observations at some of the local elementary schools, I decided that elementary school is where it's at. The scariest thing about this career change is knowing that, more so than I could say for high school, I am going to be responsible for some of the earliest experiences that these children will have with music, at least in a classroom setting. My hopes are that I can make the most out of these experiences to foster a lifetime love for music and the arts.