Observation for 3/22

Over Winter Break, I had the opportunity to observe at Prairie Point Elementary School in Oswego, Illinois with Clint Hafenrichter as the teacher. Mr. Hafenrichter was my elementary school general music teacher so it was interesting to be on a different side of his teaching.
The day started off with fourth graders in which they were learning about ship shanties. This had been their second or third lesson about ship shanties so they already knew the cultural aspects of them and the structure behind all of them. The children had also already learned an example of a song called "Across the Rio Grande." After a brief overview of the concepts already learned, all of the children were put into 3 different groups and their goal was to sing the song they already know while doing "ship work." This included moving a stack of books from one side of the room to another in a long train. Mr. Hafenrichter sat at the piano and played while the children had to figure out an effective way to get the books across the room. Naturally, the students saw it as a competition and decided to hastily and messily throw the books down to try to beat the two other groups instead of doing it effectively and in rhythm. After this happened, Mr. Hafenrichter instructed the students that in order to achieve the task, they need to work together and pass the books in rhythm with each other. After this, the students changed and it seemed a lot more organized as if they were all actually on a ship together.
After the fourth graders, there were the third graders and they were working on their third grade musical. First, they listened to the song they were supposed to sing and then they tried to sing it. The different thing than most musicals is that the students did not get any music; they only got lyrics to the song. This allowed to students to focus on listening to the musical and memorizing the words instead of actually having to read music on the page. This also made the process a lot more fun for them because they got to freestyle with one another how they thought the song should sound.
The last group of the day were the second graders. This class was particularly interesting because there were students within the class that were hearing impaired as well as visually impaired and cognitively impaired. They were mixed with regular students which created a welcoming, all-inclusive environment for all of the students. Mr. Hafenrichter wore an FM system which allowed all of the hearing impaired students the ability to hear him and there was also a sign language interpreter in the room. The topic of the day were instruments of the orchestra. Most of the students already knew the instruments so he tested their knowledge by asking them a series of questions to test their knowledge.
Overall, Mr. Hafenrichter dealt with behavior by introducing the "plus one" system in which students who exhibited exceptional behavior and went above and beyond for the day received plus ones in their grade book which boosted their grades. Students who were acting up in class or were not participating could receive "minus ones" in which they would lose points for the day. Since I went fairly late in the school year, all of the students seemed to be on their best behavior earning their plus ones and there was only one instance in which a student received a minus one. In order to get the entire class to keep each other accountable, they also had the "smiley" system. Each class would start out with one smiley on the board, if the class as a whole was exceptional for the day, the class could receive a second smiley. If the class was overall not focused or participating, their smiley could be taken away. However many smileys were on the board reflected the amount of smiley face stickers the class would get for the day. If the class got reaches certain checkpoints on their smiley face board, they would get rewards such as pick-your-own-seat day or class-without-shoes day. This motivates the class, overall to do well to earn their rewards