Teacher Assessment Instrument (Employee Evaluation)

About this time each year, my principal places a clipboard outside her office with instructions for every teacher in the building "to sign up for your observation." With 90 faculty members at Chets Creek, this is a daunting task for a principal. She must pre-conference with each teacher, observe a lesson taught by the teacher and follow-up with a post-conference once the observation has been completed. It takes numerous weeks for her to see everyone in the building!

I usually choose to show my work with the intermediate students (grades 3-5) because these students are more mature and have well-developed musical skills (playing instruments, keeping a steady beat, clapping in unison, singing in an ensemble, reading notation, etc.) that are not necessarily well-developed in younger children. This year, however, I decided to take a risk and invite my principal in to observe a lesson taught in kindergarten (she was formerly a kindergarten teacher and understands the nuances of teaching young children). My pre-conference is scheduled for Monday, October 19th; the observation is scheduled for Thursday, October 22nd and my post-conference is scheduled for Friday, October 23rd.

The lesson I will be teaching involves multiple concepts including pitch-matching, steady beat, lyrical rhymes, expressive elements (crescendo/decrescendo) and reading solfege (intervallic relationships between notes) accurately. The poem I have chosen to use in this lesson is an old English Nursery Rhyme entitled, "Lucy Locket."

Please view the following slide presentation to get a better glimpse of what will be presented during the lesson.

Lucy Locket Power Point

View more presentations from Athby Tamburrino.

I will teach a mini-lesson for 15 minutes at the front of the class and then transition to the back of the classroom for the application portion of the lesson. The learning is applied by playing a game of "hide the penny." Each student will have the opportunity to try to find the penny, but must pay attention to the expressive elements being sung (crescendo/decrescendo) for clues as to who has the penny. If our voices grow louder as we sing the rhyme (crescendo), the student is getting closer; if our voices grow softer as we sing the rhyme (decrescendo), the student is moving farther away from the person to whom I have given the penny. It's a great way to engage the children while teaching multiple concepts without them even realizing it.

Until next time...