Gregoski-General+Music+Lesson

The students have been working on steady beat for several class periods. I wanted to create a fun way for my students to play a game while at the same time being assessed. I was able to combine singing, steady beat, and playing of instruments while teaching them life skills. If they got out we said "That's okay," because they simply got to go play on the hand drums, and eventually rhythm sticks. The students had a blast, and I had 90% able to keep a steady beat with little or no help by me.

Since I learned the song "Down by the Banks" at a camp I don't have written notation. The following are the words: Down by the banks of the hankie panky Where the bull frogs jump from bank to bankie With and Eeps, Ipps, Ohhps, Ooops Jump of the Lily Pad Kerrr Plop.

Whatever student has the bean bag on Kerrr Plop is out, and would then go play on the hand drum.

__Peer Edit:__

Laura,

Your lesson has a lot of aspects for your students which keeps them active and always engaged and that is something I love about your lesson. I have not done this lesson so I do not know how smoothly it functions once in the classroom but one question I had from reading the lesson plan was do the students know when they keep the beat incorrectly and should therefore be out? Or is that something you would have to tell some students when they get out? One thing you could consider is after a little while of you catching the ones that got out of the game is having their peers take over that role. Perhaps adding that to the rotation after one gets out they could watch for the next one or however it would work the best.

Wesley

Peer Edit

Hey Laura!

I really love how you used a fun activity to assess the students! Assessments can sometimes get pretty boring for students, particularly when you need to assess and focus on individual students. So the fact that you found a fun and engaging way to assess the students is awesome! I also like how you found a way to keep all the students engaged throughout the assessment activity. Making sure that each student is occupied with something, whether it is an instrument or another part, is a great way to reduce a good number of classroom management problems. I also appreciated the various proactive steps you took when it came to managing how the students played and held the hand drums. Setting expectations beforehand is a great way to address issues before the issues even have a chance to arise. How exactly you formally assessed the students was also very well defined which is great!

One thing that I might consider doing is going back through your lesson plan, particularly the sequence portion of your lesson plan, to see if you can more clearly explain some of the steps so that someone who has no knowledge of your lesson can easily access it. For example, I wasn’t quite sure what you meant when you said “Review the ‘D’ movement.” Maybe explain what the “D” movement is. I also might provide a more thorough explanation of how to play the “Down by the Banks” game so that someone who has never played it before could easily figure out how to play it with their students. When asking the students whether they understood the directions, I might make each student answer a more specific question about the game in order to participate in the game. This holds all students accountable for the information and gives you a chance to see if every student is actually ready to play the game. Finally, you might want to take another look at your objective statement. I have found that I have a clearer idea of what I want to accomplish in a lesson if my objective statement is more concise and focused. While I’m sure you had a very clear idea of what you wanted to accomplish, it’s kind of hard to tell from your objective statement what the main goal of the lesson is.

That being said, I think this is a great lesson! I can tell that you are providing your students with awesome musical experiences!

Mick Huntley