Vocal Methods and Choral Lab
In this course, I learned the basics of vocal pedagogy, the anatomy of singing, and learned lesson planning techniques for choral classes. I put what I learned to the test by teaching two mini-lessons to my peers, as seen below.
To prepare for this lesson, I learned the 8-step procedure for teaching a song by rote, or without giving students written music. In this method, the teacher is meant to use as little verbal instructions as possible with students and instead models multiple times for students. Students listen while physically exploring moving in flow, macro and micro beats, finding the resting tone, and auditing.
The purpose of this lesson was to prepare a thorough warm-up that pre-teaches elements of a piece before starting the rehearsal process. In the warm-up, we stretched and did breathing exercises that incorporated imagery from the lyrics of the piece and rhythms from the melody. Then, we went through the mode of the piece practiced solfege, and reviewed tricky pronunciations in the song. Finally, we reviewed the first line of the piece by rote together, incorporating all of the elements of the warm-up.