In my seven weeks at Pembroke Elementary School, I worked with 300 kindergarten through fifth grade students, as well as teaching music to 4 self-contained classrooms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) students. Teaching in a four-day rotation schedule, classes received one fifty-minute music class in each rotation. I received Orff, Kodaly, and Gordon pedagogy training from my mentor teacher, and gained confident classroom management skills.
At Pembroke, I had the privilege to work with their four self-contained ASD classrooms of students. In teaching these students, I worked with para-professionals and classroom teachers to understand the abilities, strengths, and interests of these students, and crafted lesson plans that fit their individual needs and skills. Each step in my lesson plan could be easily differentiated. We would repeat the same song multiple times, allowing students to build their confidence and skills each time to participate in different ways. In this video, you will see us use manipulative materials of a bear and mouse to represent “forte” (loud) and “piano” (soft).
Catherine Moore 