Things have been going pretty well over here. Lessons are progressing smoothly overall, and most of my kids still seem to like playing their instruments, so I'll take that as a good sign. I've incorporated my first of four composition assignments this year, and got the first one back today (the due dates for them are officially next week). Although I thought I was pretty clear about what I'm looking for in them on the assignment sheet, several that I've seen are missing some of the rhythms I've asked for, so I'll need to adjust the way I presented it on the page in the future to hopefully make it clearer, even though I explained it in person, as well. I'm excited to see how they turn out, though. Some of the kids seem to be having a really fun time with it. I'm even thinking about letting some of them play their compositions for the concert in January if they feel like it (I had one student request to, and honestly I think it's a great thing for them to be able to showcase their own work, especially at the elementary level). The compositions are being incorporated as part of my SMART Goals, but I like the idea of doing it anyway and will hopefully continue doing them in coming years. In addition, the students are required to play their compositions in front of their lesson groups.
Another goal I'll be trying to fulfill is having the students do a peer performance assessment twice during the year; it's pretty straightforward but I'm having them fill out a "rubric" (how was your peer's tone? articulation? rhythm? etc.... on a scale of 1-5) and a short open-response section where they have to explain two things they liked, one thing that could use improvement, and how they could improve it. This will hopefully tie into strengthening students' open-response writing skills, as it seems to be a weaker area in the MCAS scores for at least one of the schools at which I work.
Stress, however, has come in the form of concert date chaos. I got my original dates approved by the principals at the beginning of the year. However, I realized an oopsie I made when I scheduled the dress rehearsals for the same evenings as the concerts, which would simply tire the kids out before the concert. So in trying to see if I can change it, I was informed that it would be best to change the day off of a Wednesday because of school committee meetings, so now I'm trying to figure this out without causing more conflicts for families since I had already told them the original date. Oh well, learning for next year I guess.
Fourth band rehearsal tomorrow, too, we'll see how it goes. Some behavioral issues (excessive talking and playing when we should be listening) has been a bit of a problem, so I'm trying to work out how to keep the rehearsal enthralling enough that I can cut some of this out. I tried changing the seating around, too, it helped a little but not entirely. I'll also be handing out our first full piece (sheet music instead of method book songs), so maybe that'll be some motivation to keep them occupied.
