Kendra Walters

Professor Leo

Education 302/303

April 3, 2017

Professional Literature

Christina Lamb teaches elementary music, middle school choir and

general music, and high school choir in Indiana so she knows about music

education. With her knowledge of the field, she wrote a dynamic article

about the importance of productive rehearsals. There are ten steps: start on

time, making taking attendance the students responsibility, take time to

warm up, include sight-singing, post the order of music before each

rehearsal, make sure students have pencils, say as much as you can using as

few words as possible, keep students singing, plan well for the rehearsal, and

make the rehearsal fun. All of these steps will help the teacher get as much

done as possible in the small amount of time given and will also give the

students a more structured, well-rounded choir experience. It seems that

Lambs intended audience are middle school and high school choir directors.

Even though Im coming into a choir program thats already been

established, I can still differentiate myself from my mentor teacher so that

the students will understand that my expectations may be different from

hers. If all of these steps are done correctly, classroom management would

be much easier because there is less time to lose focus, students have more

responsibilities and therefore feel more valued in the classroom, and they

would hopefully be having fun and would respect the teacher more. As I will

be leading full rehearsals, I hope that I can follow through with all of these

steps so that my unit plan will go more smoothly and I can worry more about

what Im teaching and the way that I teach it will come more naturally.

The second article was written by Susan Poliniak, the conductor of a

Junior High honors choir in Illinois. She writes about the challenges of

choosing repertoire that will help your students grow in their musical abilities

and to create a successful performance program. There are some

considerations that should be asked no matter the age of the group: Does it

mesh with the vocal range and skill level of the choristers? Is the

instrumentation possible given the resources available? Will this piece fit into

the demands of my schools curriculum? Does the text match the age and

skill level of the choristers? Is there enough time to prepare the piece based

on the difficulty? These are just some questions that a conductor should keep

in mind while choosing repertoire. Its the most important to ask yourself,

What do I wish to teach? and thinking about how the music you choose will

help to accomplish these goals. Regarding programming, Patrick Freer, a

professor of choral music at Georgia State University, says, Program the

unexpectedbut always great texts with well-written voice-leading With a

text, always think, Is this worth spending 12 weeks on?

 As she includes advice for all age levels in this article, I assume that

Poliniaks intended audience was for choir directors of all ageselementary,

middle school, high school, and even college. I am still thinking about which

song I want to choose to conduct for my unit plan so this is extremely

helpful. Its important for me not to only focus on the text, difficulty, genre,

etc. but all of these things together. I also followed Poliniaks advice of first

asking what you want to teach before choosing the music. I hope that by

knowing the various techniques and skills that I want to convey, the song

that I choose will show it well.

Bibliography

Lamb, C. (2005). Ten steps to a more productive choral rehearsal. Teaching

Music, 12(5), 46. Retrieved from
https://search.proquest.com/docview/62147287?accountid=9844

Poliniak, S. (2009). Singers branching out: How to choose repertoire that will
help your chorus students fly to new heights. Teaching Music, 16(4),
32. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/61896086?
accountid=9844