Module 2 Revised Lesson
Lesson Plan
For my middle school music appreciation class, I always did a small unit on composers. I tried to make it interesting, and covered some choice composers from the Baroque era through the 20th Century. Most of the lessons were very cut and dry. I would describe the composer and the piece and I would play the CD of the music.
A revised unit might look like this:
Create a power point that includes the composers I would like to share with the class. Include photos of the composers, some interesting facts, and a clip of the piece of music I would like them to hear, using video clips of musicians when possible. After each composer, ask the student to rate their interest in the composer and that piece of music by answering a couple of questions on a rating scale. After all of the composers have been covered, the student can see which composer they liked the best and can compare their results with their peers.
I would divide the students up into groups using their survey results from my slide show, splitting up groups larger than three or four students. I would give the students a list of composers, musicians, musical works, and musical time periods and have them choose a topic to research for their own power point presentation. I would give them suggested web sites to use for research, as well as a grading rubric and some specifications of items I would like to see in the assignment. Each student would be assigned a task in the group. Once their presentations were finished, I would allow them to show them to the rest of the class.