Teaching the Tough Stuff

I recently had a "Purple Cow" moment when my principal came in to do my annual observation a few weeks ago.  I preconferenced with her on Monday to show her my lesson plan and explain the concept I would be teaching (syncopation).  On Thursday, she quietly entered the room, sat down in the back and made notations in triplicate while I taught.  When she finished writing down everything she could think of, she quietly slipped out.  The following day, I debriefed with her.

In my debrief this year, she made a profound statement to me that has been mulling over in my mind for several weeks.  She said, "I have nothing more to say to you.  Your lesson was flawlessly delivered and perfectly scaffolded.  There is nothing I can say to you that would make it any better."  I thanked her for her extraordinary compliment, but then she continued.  "Mrs. Tamburrino, you teach the most difficult concepts in your lessons.  99% of your students don't have the proper schema or background knowledge when they walk into your classroom to be successful.  Somehow, you manage to present the material in such a way that they get it.  It is an amazing thing to watch.  I learn something new every time I visit your classroom."  She then went on to compare what I do everyday with a classroom teacher who has struggling readers they are trying to teach. 

Struggling readers have difficulty decoding.  They don't often have certain life experiences or background knowledge to understand the text they are trying to decode.  They struggle with fluency.  Their working vocabulary is limited.  Often, they can't comprehend what it is they are trying to read.  It is the teacher's job to fill in some of the blanks by scaffolding lessons that build their schema.

Unless my students have had private music lessons, my students come in with nothing.  They are a blank slate on which I must write the music language code.  There are certain music symbols they must learn to decode in order to perform the music placed before them (quarter note, half note, treble clef, notes on the staff, etc).  They must learn to speak Italian (pianissimo, forte, largo, fermata, crescendo, etc.) so they can perform the music in a musical fashion.  They must be able to decode song lyrics and understand the history behind the lyrics (regional folk songs like "Alabama Gal," the "Star Spangled Banner," etc.).  They must be able to internalize the steady beat.  They must learn to feel it, count it, move to it, clap to it, dance to it AND read it.

I would like to invite you into my classroom to view the lesson I taught the day my principal did her observation.  I used a regional folk song entitled "Alabama Gal" to teach the concept of syncopation.  Syncopation happens when you shift the strong beat in a measure of music to the weak beat.  The syllable used to perform rhythmic reading of straight quarter notes is "tah."  The syllables used to perform syncopated rhythms are "synco-pa." 

My class periods are 50 minutes long.  The edited video you are about to see is 10 minutes long.  Much of the scaffolding I presented in the actual teaching of the lesson had to be cut.  You will notice that I laid the foundation for teaching syncopation during the "Introduction to Rhythmic Reading" segment at the beginning and closed out the lesson with a melodic rendering of the song at the end.  I used a map to show where Alabama was located, I gave students the opportunity to choose body percussion to write a rhythmic composition, we enjoyed lengthy discussion on several topics as the lesson progressed - most of which was edited out.  You'll have to use your own schema to fill in the blanks.  Enjoy!


Alabama Gal from athby tamburrino on Vimeo.

Until next time...