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I chose this lesson plan because of its reliance on student expression in the form of composition. These types of lesson plans can really draw the student into the content that is being conveyed. It is important in any subject area to attempt to give the lesson a personal meaning for the students, or to relate it to their social lives, cultures, and personal thoughts, feelings, and attitudes. There was a gap in this lesson plan in that the students were to immediately be able to play the rhythm chart after a basic verbal lecture. With instruments, it is extremely important for the teacher to demonstrate how to play the instrument, and with different notation, it is important that the teacher physically shows when to play. Another gap in the lesson was that there was no tie into traditional notation. The students would potentially not be able to translate a rhythm chart into note values. Therefore, it was extremely important to add the final piece of notation so that the students could translate this lesson into other rhythmic lessons that are taught with traditional notation.
I love the comment in your reflection, "It is important in any subject area to attempt to give the lesson a personal meaning for the students, or to relate it to their social lives, cultures, and personal thoughts, feelings, and attitudes." Too often teachers and professors fail to relate to their students and thus information is not truly taught. The only way students can grasp the knowledge and leave a class with new information is if a teacher understands his/her students and can apply their personalities to the subject matter. That's why teachers cannot make a binder of lesson plans and reuse them year after year, or pull lesson plans from the internet without adapting to their own students.
ReplyDeleteI agree wholeheartedly, Scott. As I'm sure you know, an area such as music changes constantly in a classroom setting. For instance, in a choir class it may take much longer to teach a section of music because the students aren't making some sort of personal connection in whatever way they need to in order for it to make sense. It's that personal connection that is going to facilitate in the teaching of that section of music and give that section a specific meaning to the students. You can't pull a lesson plan out of a book or off the internet in order to teach a piece of music. That lesson plan must come out organically from a place that speaks to the human condition in order for students and teacher to make a connection through music.
ReplyDeleteI hope that makes as much sense to you as it does to me :)