Self-Reflection

After teaching this unit plan, I feel so much more like a teacher. I am so

glad that I had the opportunity to teach the vast majority of my unit plan in

my classroom because it let me see firsthand what worked and what didnt. I

loved evaluating my lesson plans afterward because it helped me see what I

could do differently in the future. The main detriment here was that all of my

lesson plans were written by the time I taught my first lesson so I couldnt

really change all that much without re-doing the whole thing which I didnt

want to do. In the future, I think it would be helpful to have a full unit plan

mapped out in my head, but be willing to be flexible with the actual carrying-

out of the plan so that I can base it off of how well the students responded to

certain things. And obviously the longer you teach and the better you get to

know your students, the better you would get at this.

While first brainstorming my unit plan, I decided that I wanted to do

choral habits because it was something that I thought that this particular

choir needed a refresher on. Creating that actual lesson plans was a bit

harder for me because I felt like there were things that I could and couldnt

do in that classroom. The class was so used to warming up for three minutes

and singing/study hall for the remaining time so doing anything else would

have seemed extremely out of place for them. With this in mind, I felt like I

couldnt have any out-of-the-box ideas because the class would freak out and

not be able to concentrate. So the lessons and activities that I planned were
definitely geared toward this particular class since they mainly consisted of

prolonged warmups that would reach toward a certain choral habit, explain

the habit, then show how that habit manifests itself in their concert music. I

think this general order worked well for this choir, but I still think I could have

done more with these habits to make it more interesting for the students.

During this unit I also was very aware that not everyone has the same

passion for choral music that I do. While I was explaining posture or vowel

shape or something that was really intriguing for me, some students would

be on their phones or even sleeping. This was my first wake-up call that few,

if any, are as enthused about choir as I am. This is my passion and as much

as I want them to share it with me, many of them just wont and I have to

accept that. But in a way, I can also think of it as a challenge and as a way to

motivate myself to prepare better lessons to give them a reason to come to

class and to see why choral music is so important for me.

Thinking about my unit plan in regards to Blooms Taxonomy (Woolfolk,

2013), I think that its so important in choral music that students do more

than just learn the notes and remember them for the concert. There are so

many other things that go into choir and into the pieces that they sing so I

wanted to focus on this and Im glad that I did.

Overall, I loved creating and teaching this unit plan. I learned so much

about myself as a teacher and hope that I can take all that Ive learned from

creating this unit into my future teachings.

 Work Cited

Woolfolk, A. (2013). Education Psychology (twelfth ed., p. 516). N.p.: Pearson.