I think my final sample lesson went pretty decently, although I ran out of time, again.
After my first general music lesson ran long, I came up with a few ways of tweaking it, but in the end I decided to pick up where I left off, and continue with the same lesson. Assuming a real class period is approximately 30 minutes, I think both parts of the lesson would flow smoothly, with a few minor changes.
This week, I started with a brief review of my previous lessons, glossing over the five national anthems that we had discussed and their interrelationships. I then taught the class to sing the Israeli national anthem, "Hatikvah." That went rather smoothly. I started with the pronunciations of the Hebrew words, then taught the melody in two-bar segments, and then we sang the whole song through. After that, I tried to ask the class questions about how it felt to sing that anthem, even though it wasn't their own. That was going to be a segue into the last section of the lesson, although I ran out of time. I was going to ask for characteristics of "UB Middle School" that the students felt proud of, or that they felt represented the school well. The answers in that activity would go into their homework assignment, which would be to write an anthem for our school, to the tune of a favorite song.
Teaching "Hatikvah" took about as long as I expected, but I think I spent too much time on review of the previous lesson, which made me lose the time at the end. If the two lessons were presented together, however, I think it would have worked nicely. Of course, I don't think it was perfect; there is always room for improvement. Keeping the students involved is something I will definitely work on in the future.
