Quarter One Reflections - I love grading these!

My students are tasked once a quarter to write about what they've learned at the end of the quarter.  Sometimes I am deeply touched, sometimes amazed that they are soaking in the lessons, sometimes I am amused.  Always it makes me a better teacher.

Here are some lovely tidbits from this quarter's reflections:

• For the Learning Styles and Strategies section , what stood out most to me was how stepping back and looking at yourself holistically can be much better than blindly going forward. I normally just assumed that focusing on the task ahead of me, in this case studying, would work out fine, but I didn’t know even to try diagnosing my personal study habits to become more efficient. This lesson wasn’t really about the new study habits I know to implement, but more the idea behind it of looking at the bigger picture. 
•  Many pieces of music made a big impact on me, but two of them were “So Well I Know Who’s Happy” and “Jupiter”. “So Well I Know Who’s Happy” is deeply ingrained in my mind because we actually got to sing it. I still remember two of the different parts, and I think it was really cool that we got to learn to reproduce the music with our voices. For “Jupiter”, I remembered listening to the instrumental piece, and I thought it was a very good representative of the planet and captured the atmosphere well. However, when I listened to the vocal piece, it completely blew me away. It was fascinating to see instrumental music and pop music mix together so flawlessly. I always viewed instrumental or orchestral music as a completely separate genre from modern pop music, and this was one of the first times I saw that divider crossed in this way.
• The thing that stood out the most for me when learning the recorder is the control the instrument demands from the player. You can’t blow really hard unless you want to sound like a dying duck, but you also can’t blow really soft (esp. at the higher notes) if you want a nice sound.
• Moving onto musical instruments and ensembles, most of this section was review to me as I have been part of an orchestra for almost seven years now. However, during those seven years, I never really bothered to look past the string section.
•   When I remember the learning modalities, I first believed that they were useless. However the fact that I am a tactile learner has stuck with me throughout today, and I am grateful for the quizzes I took at the beginning of the year. Once I accepted that I am a tactile learner and followed some of the recommended suggestions, I achieved higher grades.  

Favorite pieces (in order of "popularity")
The Planets - Gustav Holst
Ave Maria . . . Virgo serena - Josquin des Pres
Tchaikovsky Symphony #4 
Nutcracker March - Tchaikovsky
So Well I Know Who's Happy (madrigal sung by the students)
Britten's Young People's Guide to the Orchcestra
Notre Dame Chant (organum)
Sumer is icumen in (performed on recorders by the students)