Best Lesson In- class activity

3rd Grade

1- The purpose of this lesson was about students performing and identifying
triplet notes.
2- This lesson turned out to be good because the activities that I picked for my
students, and the map that I did for this lesson.
I started this lesson talking about syllables. I asked students to identify
different words with several syllables. After that, I asked students to clap the
syllables of that specific word. For instance, if they thought the word computer
they had to clap three times. I wanted students to connect rhythm with syllables.
Students recognized how many syllables have different words. Doing that, they
needed to think a word with three notes. We made the connection with the prefix
tri and asked the students to think where we can find tri and different words and
what tri means as a prefix. Students liked to make connections with different
syllables, they actually made their own rhythms like a songs, and they were actually
kind of rapping.
I did they introduction of triplet notes, I told the kids that when we see the
triplet notes we will think the word Musical. I wanted the students to think why we
are using the word musical when we see a triplet notes. I clapped the rhythm
saying musical and kids liked it. They were amazed how easy was performing
triplet notes. They had the connection with triplet and three syllables, and also the
connection with clapping the syllables, so now they were ready to perform and
identify triplet notes.
I asked the students to make up with different rhythms combining only
quarter notes. They came up with four different rhythms and I put a number to each
one of these numbers. I clapped the rhythms saying the word musical for the
triplet notes and ta for quarter notes. Then, they had to guess which rhythm I was
clapping so they showed me with her hands what rhythm I clapped.
We played a game these four rhythms. I clapped the rhythm without any
word and they needed to get together with the correct number of the specific
rhythm that I was clapping.
This class turned out to be great because kids got excited with syllables and
rhythm and also the game that we did. At the end of the class they had to do their
exit ticket, identifying triplet notes and also doing a dictation with triplet notes and
quarter notes as well.

Worst Lesson In- class activity

7th grade

1- The purpose of this lesson was learning how to build up major scales and in
this way identify the key signatures of different pieces.
2- This lesson turned out to be the worst because the lack of activities. I got
stuck with only one activity and it became really bad because students got
bored by this assignment.
We started to talk about patterns and how these patterns are needed in our
normal activities. We talked about letters, and the patterns that we have when we
write a letter. Then, I told the students that we need to have patterns so that we can
have order in our lives.
Music has patterns and we can notice when we listen to a specific music.
When a music is played we can notice that it has a beginning, and when we keep
listening this music we notice that every different melodies has a connection
because the scales and the connection of this scales. We know when music is ended
because the sound sounds like completeness.
We start to know the pattern of major scale and we talked about whole steps
and half steps. And then I build up the C major scale and the G major scale, which
has only one sharp. Then I asked students to pick one note and based on that note
they needed to build up a major scale.
This activity turned out to be slow and a little bit difficult for my students. So
they felt desperate because the pattern did not work out, a lot of them had
questions and I really needed to work one by one but students got distracted by
some other stuff. I lost them for about fifteen minutes.
Most of them did not understand the concept and I had to teach the subject
again but a little bit different.
3- I really needed more activities, more moving and less stillness. I think the
concept is kind of hard to get but if I would have had more activities with
different steps and more connections I think that would have been better for
this lesson.