Once again, I was really not sure where to begin when planing a general music lesson. I was a student in general music during elementary school, but that was many years ago, and I only remember bits and pieces. Plus, this was a lesson for 8th grade, not elementary school. But I am interested in national anthems, and musical traditions in different parts of the world. So I did a bit of digging, and I took bits and pieces from various locations.
I think the lesson went decently well, although I think I went over the 10-minute time limit. That problem may have derived from the fact that I played a YouTube clip for each of the five anthems I discussed, which ate up a fair amount of time (including two YouTube ads that couldn't be skipped). And given the topic of national anthems, it seemed to become less of a music lesson and more of a lesson in history and literary analysis. It also was mostly lecture-style, which I know can easily become boring for younger students, even when YouTube is involved. I tried to keep the students involved by providing handouts with the lyrics, and asking them questions throughout. However, only some students responded to those questions, and as the instructor pointed out afterward, the only way I can be sure that the entire class is involved is to ask specific questions to specific students. When repeating this lesson, I will try to draw more parallels among the anthems discussed, and also to keep it more musically oriented. I also may cover less material superficially, in order to dig deeper and more adequately cover the material that is still included (cover less to cover more).
Unrelated to my lesson directly, I very much enjoyed my classmates' lessons. Since I never took general music past fifth grade, I never knew how broad the spectrum of topics could be. It was very interesting to see the different directions everyone took. I especially liked Kurt's demonstrations of how we can observe sound waves, and the overlap of music and physics.
I personally enjoyed the fact that you took National anthems from around the world, and connected the generalized themes between them.
ReplyDeleteI sat in on an Elementary school level class (well a few) that taught our National Anthem, and our state anthem, Yankee Doodle. The kids sang Yankee Doodle, which they thoroughly enjoyed, and they also learned some background and meaning to the lyrics.
For the purpose of the mock lessons, I agree that you should hone in on one or two of those national anthems, and maybe perhaps have the class sing them as well.