Part 7: Reflection and Self-Evaluation

A. Interpretation of Student Learning

I was unable to get a written post-assessment score from Student #22 as well as a
creative score from Students #14 and 22 because of lack of attendance. I am unable to
report their post-assessment learning, although they did perform the Stepping sequence
with rhythmic accuracy.
About one-third of the class did not initially earn a passing grade on the written postassessment which tested their understanding of the vocabulary. This surprised me at first.
As mentioned in Section 5, I chose not to use note-taking to teach this vocabulary based
on the general glazed-eye response from the students when I previously tried that
instructional strategy. Thinking that the students were a mix of auditory and/or
kinesthetic learners, I approached these new words by verbally explaining them as we
learned corresponding movement. I regularly asked questions to keep them thinking
(Who could show me how our adage sequence goes? Who could tell me what adage
means? What is our vocabulary word for fast movement? etc.), thinking that this
would help them internalize the new words.
As the post-assessment scores demonstrate, this teaching technique worked for a
number of the students; however, it obviously did not work for all. I learned that, even
though it may seem that most students do not respond to one approach to learning,
teaching to other teaching styles is still helpful for student learning.
The results from the creative/practical assessments confirmed that this group of
students is indeed full of kinesthetic and experiential learners. Although they struggled
with performing accents at the beginning of the unit, they executed them well

considering their skill levelby the end of the unit. This will be further addressed in the
following section.
B. Insights on Effective Instruction and Assessment
Possibly the most successful learning activity was the Stepping sequence that
addressed rhythmic accuracy. The students were so enthusiastic about it that I extended
the activity into a day-and-a-half more than I had initially planned. Many struggled with
coordination at first, but they became more confident by the end.
This brings me to what I believe was the most successful assessment of the unit,
where they performed the Stepping sequence while traveling across the floor in groups.
The objective was clear to all students regardless of English language proficiency or
learning disabilities, and the students were enthusiastic. They were able to perform the
sequence in a canon while staying true to their own rhythms while divided into groups.
As a teacher, the groups were small enough that I could assess the needs of the class
effectively.
On the other hand, the least successful learning activity was in the lead up to a
discussion about musicality. I asked partnerships to write two words to describe how a
song sounded to them. Their assignment was to then create 8 counts of movement that
reflected one of those adjectives. The students accomplished the assignment with some
successes and problems (see next paragraph), but when I asked them later to describe
musicality, they stared at me blankly. I realized then that I had not been explicit enough
that we were doing this activity as an exploration of musicality. I will elaborate more on
this in the following section.

One of the least successful assessments was the creative post-assessment. Initially, I
had planned for this assessment to address musicality, rhythm, and accent execution. The
students did create movement that reflected the partnerships chosen adjectives, and a
large portion of them incorporated the assigned rhythm, but none of them used the tempo
of the music as the basis for that rhythm. In the end, I decided to grade them based upon
whether their movement reflected the adjectives they had chosen and the clarity of their
accents only. I decided that to use the Stepping sequence as a rhythmic accuracy postassessment instead.
Plausible reasons for these activities successes and/or failures will be provided in the
following section, as these reasons are directly related to where I would take these
activities in the future.
C. Implications for Future Teaching
The students were surprisingly engaged and interested in learning about Stepping
from the beginning when we read the historical background of the genre, despite the high
number of ELLs and low reading level students. After reading as a class, I asked the
group as a whole some reading comprehension questions to help fill in the holes for those
who needed it.
Some students understood the rhythm, but struggled getting it into the right body
partsthey could clap or vocalize it, but then their feet would stop when they were
supposed to clap. To help this, I broke down the movement as mentioned in Section 4.
Mirroring them, I would give an example of 4 counts of a rhythm, and they would repeat
it back to me in a call-and-answer fashion.

Although I did not make this explicit, I chose to present the material in this call-andanswer fashion as a reflection of how music is often taught in African and AfricanAmerican culture. Actually explaining that would have helped to contextualize deepen
the meaning behind the content. Suddenly, they are not only learning fun rhythms and
movement sequences, but they are also learning about diverse cultures. They may have
learned that subliminally to a certain extent, but I would like it to be stronger.
As far as accents go, I would like to do a few things differently in the future. First, I
want to help students get to a deeper understanding of accents. We talked about and
practiced demonstrating them, but the learning activities did not get students to think as
critically as they could have. I envision beginning with a simple movement while sitting
at the beginning of the class (circling an arm, for example), and practice accenting
different counts with the exact same movement. I would then lead the students through an
activity where they were to find and hold a shape all on one count; adjust the count that
they move on so that they can feel accents in different places in the music. Throughout
this, I would love to ask questions like How can you accent this movement? Is that the
only way to accent it? What other ways could we accent it?
When it comes to musicality, I would like that to be a continual discussion through
the unit. As we learn various movement sequences, ask the students to reflect on whether
they feel the movement works with the music we are using. Let them defend their opinion
and press them to use reasoning beyond things like, Its a weird song. Although I may
not change the music according to their desires, they will be able to start identifying and
defining what musicality means to them. Then we would spend a day trying the

movement sequences to different kinds of music and discuss whether they felt the new
songs worked better or worse.
D. Implications for Personal Professional Improvement
The most prevalent area for improvement that I see is knowing the full implications
of the demographics of my classroom before teaching them. Although I knew the
statistics of the class, I did not realize how low some of these students proficiencies
werefor instance, exactly how low language proficiencies were.
To prevent this in the future, I plan to go to more faculty and IEP meetingsto
collaborate more with the Special Education and ELL teachers in my future school from
the beginning.
Another area that I want to improve in is strongly connected to the one mentioned
above: I teach to different learning styles overall, but when it comes to a particular
concept or activity, I am limited in my approach. I want to approach each concept more
times than I did from a different lens.
To combat this weak area, I plan to go to teacher conferences regularly, such as
UDEO and/or NDEO. Here, I will be exposed to other educators points of view and
gather teaching resources to improve my ability to teach to diverse students, and I plan to
continue that habit. I will need to do my own research on teaching to diverse learners (not
just learners of different intellectual or linguistic ability, but also students who simply
have different learning style preferences). This will require me seeking out articles in
educational journals; consistently working with teachers of other; and collaborating with
other dance teachers in the district/state/nation (again, attending UDEO and NDEO
would help with this).