Module 12&14-Blog Posting 1

1. I don’t really have any questions or confusions about the reading.

2. Music teachers can use metacognitive knowledge by analyzing their teaching strategies, such as how they conduct their choir rehearsals, and figuring out their strengths and weaknesses as a teacher as well as the strengths and weaknesses of their choir. Once the teacher has analyzed what they need to work on and improve on, they can then move on to realize how they can execute each of the task that they want to achieve during their teaching time. For example, a music teacher might want to improve her choir’s tone, so she has to realize that possible singing a certain section of a piece within sections of the choir is the smartest way to go about achieving the sound that he/she wants. The final step would be for the teacher to use his/her strategic knowledge and realize if the certain task can even be accomplished the way that is being used. For example, an elementary music teacher wouldn’t want to experiment with sectionals because young children tend to have short attention spans and wouldn’t be able to control their focus while the teacher was working with separate sections for a prolonged period of time.

When wanting to develop metacognitive regulation in a music setting, the first step would be for the teacher to plan out her rehearsals and practice sessions well, as well as scheduling some kind of routine for the students to follow for each rehearsal (warming up and putting their music in order before class starts). The teacher will need to realize the difficult parts that he/she would want to work on the most in each piece that was being rehearsed, along with some strategies to try and use to get over the hurdles of the pieces. After the teacher has rehearsed the pieces for a time, it is now time for the teacher to check to see if the strategies are working for her class by possibly holding sectionals (taking separate voice sections and having them sing certain parts for the teacher). The sectionals should take place once the students are pretty familiar with the pieces that are being tested. The final step would be for the teacher to evaluate the outcomes of the strategical aspects of the teaching by possibly using the strategies that worked during rehearsal and applying them to a concert, so that the children are used to every aspect of the pieces and can perform them with confidence.

3. Metacognition would work much better in my content area of music because when teaching music, there really is no right or wrong answer when evaluating a choir’s performance in rehearsal. There usually is never homework in my field, so the student’s reflect and discuss a lot in class. Music teachers have to strategize a lot when teaching pieces or musical concepts to his/her class because different groups of musicians tend to learn music and perform it differently than other musicians would, so the teacher would have to have many different options to teach from when entering a rehearsal. If a certain technique isn’t working for the group, the teacher would have to know where to turn to and “experiment” with the group until the sound or technique is accomplished. Music is studied through repetitive rehearsal, for the most part, and that in itself is a very positive strategy that is used in music classes everywhere. Music takes a lot of thinking out of the box and isn’t analytical whatsoever, because it’s different for everyone that performs it within a classroom setting. Music teachers tend to have their students evaluate their own performances rather than telling the students how it was, which requires a lot of thought and evaluation on the student’s part.