Delta Middle School
Listening/Counting/Composition Lesson Reflection

On Tuesday, December 5, 2006, Bruce Fane and I completed our second and final field teaching experience at Delta Middle School. We were prepared to teach the entire class period, all 45 minutes or so, but upon arriving in the classroom we were surprised to find two of our peers from the other section of this class already set-up at the front of the room, all ready to teach! A brief negotiation ensued, and we decided to split the class time in half (they were only prepared with about 20-25 minutes of material anyway). Thus, we cut about half of our lesson out – the latter half which, quite frankly, was the weaker half of the lesson anyway.

Once it was our turn, we proceeded with our lesson. Bruce started by reviewing the takadimi that we had taught the class during our last visit. We then took this concept a bit further, having the students create their own rhythms by using our takadimi cards to “compose” four-beat rhythm patterns. They seemed to enjoy this, at least some of them. It became more interesting once we passed out the instruments. One comment Olfier made on our evaluation form was that she liked the way we passed out the instruments, keeping order all the while. This is true; as simple as it seemed to me at the time, I simply instructed the students to quickly, quietly, and carefully come up and grab an instrument – I helped them get the instruments (especially the drums) out of the box, and it went quite quickly and smoothly. Despite seeming like such a small part of the lesson, something that we simply had to get through in order to get back to “teaching,” it is in fact indicative of a very important part of teaching. Small classroom management issues such as getting instruments out (and the subsequent putting away of instruments) is, ahem, instrumental in having an effective lesson. We didn’t let the instruments get in the way of the lesson; instead, they augmented the lesson and caused no problems.

Finally, we had the students listen to Hey Jude by The Beatles. In keeping with their present theme of rock’n’roll, this served two purposes. First, it connected directly with that theme by exposing them to yet another song from the rock’n’roll era. Also, it gave us an opportunity to work our counting lesson into a rock’n’roll song. After listening to this song, we gave them a rhythm (again using the takadimi cards) to play, and they then played this rhythm on their instruments along with the song. Lastly, they once again came to the board and “composed” rhythms, this time to be played along with Hey Jude.

All told, I felt the lesson went fairly well. I’ll be the first to admit it was not a terribly exciting lesson, for the students nor for Bruce and I. However, the takadimi portion was excellent. Whether or not the kids actively enjoyed it is unclear; all I can say for sure is that they did not complain and, in fact, made noticeable progress. As I commented to them at the end of our lesson, in just over 20 minutes they learned to count music and read notation in that way, they composed rhythms, and they performed rhythms with a Beatles’ song. How cool is that? It truly is amazing what even these “non-musical” kids can do.

I might go so far as to say we had no glaring weaknesses. Now, one could make a case for us needing to simply write a better lesson, more interesting, more involving. But given the lesson we had (and the sudden time constraints), I felt like we executed the lesson quite clearly and effectively. The students seemed to understand what we wanted them to do. Bruce and I followed each other well, too, and neither of us forgot about anything in the lesson. I suppose the main thing I learned from this lesson was simply a reinforcement of the fact that kids are capable of a lot, they simply need to be presented with the right tools. If their teachers’ expectations of them are high enough, they will perform to the same level. Bruce and I got a small taste of that with this lesson.

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