SO UN D I N G T H E T E A CH IN G
2
Exposition
EX A MI NI NG MU SI C LEA R NI NG EX P ER I ENC ES
K E E P T H E
M O M E N T U M G O I N G!
S
ince the Class Dojo lesson with 1A, Ben started changing his
teaching strategy and discipline style, but he still had a few
other issues. One of which was keeping the momentum of the
lesson going. Next, he called on a student and asked him, “Listen to what I play
and tell me whether this is a chord or a note?”
In another class, where Ben was teaching the same lesson on breathing
techniques, he spent 10 minutes talking about posture and the
diaphragm, and how the whole breathing system works. By the end of
that 10 minutes, the students were already quite restless, so he scolded
them for not paying attention. Wanting to be in full control, he refused
to continue until they were totally quiet and that took up another 10
minutes. By then, Ben was already quite flustered and found it difficult
to carry on with his lesson plan. The student could not tell the difference and gave the wrong
answer. He reprimanded the student for not paying attention,
then continued testing a few more students. Some got it right
while others didn’t. Ben then moved on to the next activity.
Having too much teacher talk was not the only way Ben broke the
momentum of the lesson. In a lesson on creating rhythms using
body percussion, Ben had planned to start the lesson by teaching the
students six different rhythm patterns. He started off with the simpler
rhythms. He clapped and the students followed. The students struggled
a bit at first, but by the third rhythm, they started to get the hang of it
and were looking forward to more challenging rhythms. This was when
Ben stood up and said, “We shall move on to the next activity.” The
students were surprised and some continued to clap and tap on their
own, while others asked for more, but Ben moved on to the next activity.
When I asked Ben why he stopped after the third rhythm, he said he had
forgotten the other three rhythms he had planned.
“Huh? Teacher, I don’t know.”
Having made all these observations, I came up with a few
guidelines for Ben to follow when he did his planning, execution
and reflection.
1
ENOUGH
activities to
engage ALL
students most
of the time
2
Look for evidence
that learning
(assessment)
is taking place.
Assessment should
be non-threatening
3
Keep the
momentum and
let the lesson flow
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Other than keeping the momentum of a lesson going, there was another
issue which I observed.
During a ukulele lesson, Ben was trying to teach students the difference
between a chord and a note. Ben started off by telling the class that
a chord is made up of three notes, then played a few chords on the
ukulele. He then played a few single notes in succession on the ukulele
and told the students, “This is a note.”
With these guidelines, Ben started planning lessons with more
engaging activities and worked on his lesson execution. I noticed
that he started to reflect deeper and was a lot more critical of
himself than when he first started.
However, Ben had one other issue.