Listening Lesson Reflection

On Monday, September 25th, I taught my listening lesson on Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I used a recording of an organ (as if in the original style) as the foundation for the rest of our discussion. We then listened to excerpts from three different arrangements, for three different ensembles, of the same work. From these we made comparisons and described what we heard.

Overall, I am very happy with my lesson. From a planning perspective, I felt very prepared. My actual printed lesson plan was detailed enough to keep me on track, yet I could not read verbatim from it. I also planned the pacing of my lesson well. Some of the students later reported having not realized that my lesson was just shy of 15 full minutes – it felt like shorter! The point there is that it was paced well, so the students enjoyed it enough to not even notice how long it was, in reality, taking.

The materials I used were also excellent, in my opinion. I have always adored the Swinging Bach DVD, so it was a real joy to be able to edit my own montage of pieces from that show. The DVD I made was, again, long enough to be useful and interesting, yet concise enough to not be boring to the students. Also, the handout made it easy for the students to take notes – and helped guide their thinking processes.

I honestly didn’t feel that there were a lot of areas I could have improved in. However, there is definitely one area that I always need to work on – my use of vocalized pauses. I often use “um” or “uh” in my speech. This is true in teachings, presentations, speeches, and even daily conversations. It had pervaded my speech patterns, and I need to work on this. Upon watching my video, I caught myself doing this many times. Otherwise, I felt the lesson went very well, and I look forward to possibly adapting the lesson for use in a real middle school setting.

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