Education Twenty-Seven Kindergarten Students Attended Mrs. Brontny's Term Paper

Education

Twenty-seven kindergarten students attended Mrs. Brontny's music period. Fifteen of the students were male and twelve were female. The ethnicity of the students varied as follows: five African-American; two Hispanic; and the remainder were Caucasian. All spoke English well. There was only one teacher, Mrs. Carol Brotny. The room itself was large, brightly lit with fluorescent tubes but natural light streamed through the large windows. Instead of chairs, the teacher had placed a large area rug on the floor and the students either sat or stood up as the activity warranted.

When the students first entered the room they sang "This is my space," while they found a spot they liked. Mrs. Brontney's room was dedicated to music: posters on the walls ranged from song charts to photographs of instruments, mostly drums. The instruments in the room also varied. There was a grand piano as well as an older upright piano in one corner of the room. A full orchestral set was present, including large brass and woodwind instruments.

The central activity of this day's music class was to sing the Halloween song "Pumpkin, Pumpkin, Round and Fat turn into a Jack-O-Lantern Just Like That." The teacher varied the activity by having the girls and boys sing separately before joining in together.The students eagerly participated in the game-like song, made funny faces, and thrived on the teamwork that was involved. For example, the teacher set pumpkins on a gate to signal the start of the song and all the students jumped right in. The only prop that Mrs. Brontney used during the class was the "Book-Pumpkin Bucket-Flannel Board," a brown gate used specifically for the Halloween song. As a result, Mrs. Brotney's classroom management techniques were seamless with her lessons. At no point did she need to use discipline because the students were avidly interested in what they were doing.

The wide-open layout of the classroom was also conducive to teamwork and collaborative learning. There was enough room on the rug that the students didn't get in each others' way. Also, the 20 minute classroom time was brief enough that all students remained on-task. The brevity of the class time ensured that Mrs. Brontny didn't need to worry about formal classroom management techniques.

Another central activity in Mrs. Brontney's class was rhythm. Much of the lesson entailed having the students clap in time with the beat of a song, or play a drum to the beat. I could deduce from Mrs. Brontney's class that her….....