Idioms are Here

This was the first lesson we had that was geared toward a performance. The students seemed to enjoy being recorded. They also were able to do an excellent job at recalling certain idioms they knew and enjoyed creating their own idioms.

Click HERE for a link to the lesson plan

When we split in between the song and chant, it was a little difficult for them to understand the pattern. I think this will be clarified next time as we talk about Rondo Form and introduce rhythm.
They are very good at keeping the beat and now need more complex concepts. Next time, we will go into box notation of their chants.

Overall, this lesson was a success, ending in a refined recording of them singing and chanting. I learned that it is alwasy good to overplan your lessons rather than underplan.

Charting Simple Gifts

Practice Makes a Difference
I am so thankful for this lesson! It marked improvement in my abilities and learning process!

The biggest things I learned was how important it is to practice the lesson beforehand. I had practiced it several times before the day of the lesson and it showed in how smoothly it ran. Also, I learned from the previous lesson and varied the way I assessed instead of just doing raising hands. This help the students be more engaged. 

Wrap-up Questions
The most fulfilling part was that at the end after I asked what they learned two girls raised their hands and stated the objective almost verbatim. I was so thankful that they EXPERIENCED the concept of active listening and thus were able to compare and contrast two melodies!! I felt much better about it than the past lessons.

Improvements
Some things that could improve are, they could be more active and use more modalities of learning like visual and kinesthetic. I learned an important thing that in today's world, students will always be bored at some point. Our job is to help them be as engaged as possible and learn to not need be stimulated every second of every day. I would like to reinvent the lesson to provide more full-body kinesthetic motion to help them stay active. They prefer when they move the tables and can work in the middle.

For a Lesson Plan link click HERE