Alhambra High, Piano-Lab Lesson Plan for “Key Signature”
Ziwei Bai
Content Standard:
-1.1Read an instrumental score of up to four staves and explain how the elements of music are used.
-1.3Sight-read music accurately and play expressively.
Objectives:
– Students are able to figure out what key signatures mean to a given note, how to write a key signature (including sharp sign “#”, flat sign”b” and a natural sign) and how key signature mean to relative major and minor.
– Students are able to compose a piece of song based on a C major key version “Ode to Joy” or “Largo” from Dvorak with added key signatures.
Materials: Textbook “Alfred Adult All in One” p.13, 35 ; Key Signatures-Treble Clef, Bass Clef(showing below); Pencils.
Procedures:
Lesson 1: Basic Concepts of Key Signature
What are “Sharp” and “Flat” mean? Look at your keyboard.
from “C to B” direction. Generally speaking, Sharp means a half step up from a white key note;Flat means a half step down from a white key note. They are usually black key notes except: E # is the F, C b is the B.
Gave students 5 examples of Sharp and Flat notes to test their understanding of concept.
Turn the page to “Ode To Joy” and “Largo” from the textbook binder;
Review the Ode To Joy and Largo with me, playing without headphone.
Used your pencil to compose your song by added key signature on original C major version, trying on your keyboards when you are doing the composing part and play through your whole composed piece to review before showing to teachers.
Lesson 2: Advanced Knowledge on Sight-reading and related Major and Minor key.
learning how to recognize the key signature on both treble and tenor clef with the chart I shown above. The patterns of sharp signatures follow the orders of F,C,G,D,A,E,B.; flat signatures follow the opposite orders of B,E,A,D,G,C,F.
Despite C major and A minor(which have no key signature), the way to find the major key of one piece of music is counting a step up from the last sharp signature and the penultimate flat signature.
After recognizing the major key, you can find the related minor key by counting a minor third(4 steps) from your major key.
Turn the page to “Ode To Joy” and “Largo” from the textbook binder;
Choosing one major or minor key from the chart I shown and transposing the original song to your selected key on Sibelius.
Lesson 2 Teaching Video：
2:21-5:05 Learning Patterns of Related Major key by observing given key signatures
8:03-10:23 Patterns of Sharp and Flat orders,
10:30-10:38 Mrs.Peterson’S approach in memorizing Sharp Patterns:
Fat, Cat, Go, Down, Alley, Eating, Burrito.
12:16-13:48 How to find the related minor key from its’ Major key.
18:37- 20:18 Transposing C major Ode Joy to G major, Example of first two measures.
For me, a music teacher always has to be creative on their teaching skills and never be obstinate on our own experience and philosophy. In order to become an innovative music educator, we need to first become a patient thinker and communicator for all students, then trying and creating different strategies of teaching in the real classroom environment which based on our analyzing of different learning style. We should never stop searching the most effective learning methods by practicing in the real classroom environment, even though we might make some mistakes.
Lesson Plan for Silents，Silents in G Major and B flat Major
Material Needed: Do IT Book (p.21 for band book, p.28 for string book) , guitar, string or wind instrument which can play G Major and Bflat major scale, flashing cards.
Objectives: The students will be able to sight reading the score correctly and independently. And also play correctly on their instruments.
Assessment: Students will be able to tell me the pitches, rhythm types on each variation from my flashing cards and showing me where to play each pitch on their guitar or cello and clapping out the rhythm before they start to play.
Teaching Steps:
Introduction for class that today we are going to learn a two line harmonic melody.
(1) I will clap the three types of rhythm from this song which in the flashing cards too. Students will follow me each time after I clap the rhythm for two measures long. The student will count the beat with “ta-a-，ta，tati” for half, quarter and two eighth notes from notations by themselves.
(2)I will sing the song with solfege and the song for everyone with my guitar for the first melody line, then sing for the second accompaniment line.
Then open their books to silents silents, Students will sing their melody line by solfage in their key and accompaniment line by humming only.
I will separate the class into two groups for singing melody line and accompaniment line by raising their hands when I am asking. Then students will sing their own parts the same way with solfege and humming by clapping each note.
(3) I will play the whole song for both melody and accompaniment line from the string book which is in G major key for one time. Students will need to practice the part that they have sang quickly and tried the other part too. Then students will raise their hands to choose their first part to play and show their “ready to play” position on their instrument.
(4) Go back to the Step 3 again, after 2 minutes of practice, let’s all sing the solfage and play together slowly by following the exact notation on the score. I will switch the group and do the same exercise again. Then only play the whole song without singing for the final round.
Closure:
Well, what a great accompaniment for all of you. Now you know how to learn a song by feeling it, hearing it, singing it and playing it, right? So after school, you can pick one of your partner to play your song and learn a new song with two parts melody lines. You can also choose someone who played in a different key with you and try their parts? Next class, I want everyone to play something new. Thanks！
Teaching Video：
Personal Reflection after Teaching：
Second Teaching： Final Unit Round 2.
Lesson plan for “ Jolly Old Sleigh Ride ”
Date of Teaching: December 1st
Materials:
Sheet music of “ Jolly Old Sleigh Ride ”; Mallet Percussion- Bells; Timpani, other small percussions; Flute, Oboe, 2 B flat Clarinets, E flat Alto Saxophone, 2 B flat Trumpets, Tenor Saxophone, Low Brass, Piano if required.
Concepts：
Aural Training with Rhythmic Patterns from specific measures such as mm.5-8, mm17-18, mm37-40(Flute, Oboe, Clarinet1, Bells part); mm 37-38(Clarinet2, Trumpets,Tenor Saxophone and Low Brass). Without notation.
Rhythmic Patterns Review and Learning from specific measures list above in concept 1 on Concert B flat.
Learning Dynamic Articulations and Expressions from score.
Playing through the whole section from mm.1-46.
Behavioral Objective/Assessment/State Standard:
TSW will be able to follow and count the specific rhythmic patterns that I will speak out in sound of “Du, Dah…” , including 6 eighth notes and a quarter note; 12 eighths notes and a half note; 8th , 8th rest, quarter and 8th , 8th rest, two 8ths pattern, 6 eighths, quarter, 4 eighths, half.
I will clap the beat consistently in 2/4 meter. (PFS, Novice, maintain a steady beat, with auditory assistance, while playing individually and with others the following note and rest values:half, quarter, eighth)
TSW will be able to read and play the specific rhythmic patterns from mm 5-8, mm 17-18, mm 37-40(Flute, Oboe, Clarinet1, Bells part); mm 37-38(Clarinet2, Trumpets,Tenor Saxophone and Low Brass) in a consistent Bflat from their instrument; For specific percussion which did not have pitches, hitting the instruments with rhythmic pattern instead. (PFS, Novice, maintain a steady beat, with auditory assistance, while playing individually and with others the following note and rest values:half, quarter, eighth)
TSW will be able to play the whole section of mm.29-46 with all expression marking on the score, including mezzo piano, mezzo forte, crescendo, forteand follow my conducting cue. (PFS, Novice, respond to basic conducting cues including tempo and dynamics symbols)
Introduction:
Today we are going to learn how to play this Christmas piece from the beginning til the middle mm.47 in a very fast pace, gonna be a little challenge.
Procedures:
Everyone put their instrument and score down in a resting position, I start to clap the rhythm in 2/4 meter in two beat and every student follow me and clap the beat in duple meter consistently. I will then start using the sound of “Du, Dah…”for every important rhythmic pattern from the score including 6 eighth notes and a quarter note; 12 eighths notes and a half note; 8th, 8th rest, quarter and 8th , 8th rest, two 8ths pattern, 6 eighths, quarter, 4 eighths, half , twice or three times in a roll.
Everyone raises their instrument up into playing position, finding the concert Bflat. I will write down each rhythmic patterns on the board, telling students the measure number of each rhythmic patterns on board. Students who find the same rhythmic pattern that I have listed on the board will raise their hands and play in concert Bflat or for specific percussion just hitting the rhythm from score: mm 5-8, mm 17-18, mm 37-40(Flute, Oboe, Clarinet1, Bells part); mm 37-38(Clarinet2, Trumpets,Tenor Saxophone and Low Brass).
Reading the sections of mm.27-29 and mm. 36-37 as examples, let students tell me the dynamic symbol here on score (mpand mf ,crecendo to f) and how to play each section of melody in correct volume and follow my conducting. Trying to play through these 2 section with exact music from the score with correct dynamic expressions.
Sight-reading the score quickly with fingering, without making sounds out, figure out dynamic marking and rest carefully from the beginning to the ends.
Playing the song with moderately fast and energy from mm.1-46.
Closure:
After today’s class, we have already went through 2/3 of the song and we have already learned how to play the song more expressively and accurately. So when you practicing at home, please be aware to go through all elements including a Bflat major scale, difficult rhythmic patterns and dynamics changes before you began the whole song. Thank you!
Teaching Video：
Personal Reflection for my first teaching of this class:
From my video observation, my lesson follows each steps below:
Step1: I actually started the lesson with the #1 element, I picked up two tricky rhythmic patterns and let students clap for that and using aural memorizing.
Step 2: I tried to let the instruments which in Concert B flat and C Major to play a scale from their tonic notes to an octave higher for #3 elements tonal experience.
Step 3: Since they have already know the range and key for their section of piece, I pointed out each important melodic part for different instruments and let them play through the section of mm.5-29 together as a band with the #5 element.
Step 4: Points out some sections with big dynamic changes and let them play again like Step 3 by emphasizing those expressions.
For what I like from my teaching, I think first, for the beginning part of modeling the difficult rhythms and let them play the B flat Major and C Major scales should be very helpful to get ready for their rehearsal to play together in tune; Moreover, it can be a good tonal experience to start play B flat and C together and tried to let student match each other tune by their own auditory before stated the whole song together. Secondly, by conducting in slow pace at first help the band to feel easier in playing together. Furthermore, for the second time of conducting, I had pointed out the dynamic changes and tried to show them from my second conducting by using different extents for my arms movements.
From my lesson plan, I would like to add some combining tonal and rhythmic practices for the tricky section for each instrument before starting to play the whole song first. And I will probably take away some of my unnecessary demonstrations like “the score is very difficult to read” and long stops and pulses between my demonstrations.
For my conducting, I would like to use 2 hands instead of one hands for the next time because if I only use right hands, the left hands sides students can probably not able to see my conducting clearly. On the other hands, I would analyze the score by marking where to cue my melody and trying to practice for conducting in the mirror, in order to see whether or not I can lead the whole band smoother. Finally, I need to prepare my lesson plan before the class that I can be more organized for each steps I will teach in the class, so I can be more comfortable and avoiding unnecessarily stops.
The final unit project for me is a brand new experience and valuable learning process for me. Although I had no prior knowledge and ideas for how to teach a band, but after reviewing comments from my colleagues, instructors and especially teaching videos, I did gradually find out what specific areas I can improve in the future.
First of all, I want to talk about my final teaching at the Greenfield Junior High School, which I don’t really think the whole class can understand my goals clearly. From the beginning of the video, I was trying to not use the white board to reinforce tricky rhythmic patterns from the music by aural practicing and let them find the rhythms from specific section of music scores. However, I didn’t show the class clearly enough to cue them repeat the same rhythms and my use of language in demonstrating those rhythmic patterns from measures of score was confusing for students the after me until Dr. Sullivan gave me the suggestions and reminders. I might need to establish just one small goal with simple language for the class in order to make sure students know where or what I want to do instead of demonstrating a long and broad concept and modeling on an instrument for students.
For those parts which I think the class in successfully making progress was my demonstration of dynamic changes after the first two concepts. I pointed out the specific measures with “crescendo, diminuendo, mf, mp” for them and let them played through the first 2/3 of song. I also told them to focus on those expression markings and try their best to show in this rehearsal, they all tried their best to follow my conducting and played steadily and musically as what I mentioned to them. On the other hands, there are three strengths that I found in my final teaching which are firstly, my concepts of learning specific tricky rhythms with “du, dah..” which is very easy for students to mimic by voice; Secondly, pointing out the expression markings from their scores at the first hand before they started to play the whole section in the last section of my teaching, which is helpful to remind them where to make a change and play more musically; Finally, the helping of my conducting directions with left my empty left hand to cue the dynamic changes for the performance in my final conducting video and the last section of final teaching.
Comparing the my teaching experience of teaching this lesson in high school to our class, I found out that the main differences is the ways and the language that I need to use to demonstrate my concept. For example, high school students might not exactly understand what is “ look at your score” means but they know what the “look at your music” means. So avoiding the complexity of language and also slowing down the pace of teaching is necessary in teaching the high school. More necessary, with conducting and teaching the lesson twice in class, I did become more confident in projecting my voice and how to run my class with better timing. Because I had a lot of chances to learn from my colleagues during their teaching practices in class and continually finding their strengths of teaching especially in how to catch attentions and activate students with voice projecting, language use and eye contact.
From the two teaching videos: Gordon Level 1-2 and Do it! Teaching Video, I had barely made an eye contact to students and continuously making necessary pauses during the class in instruments teaching. Moreover, my voice projecting is very weak at that time and lack of confident from my speaking voice and body movements. Comparing to my final teaching and my intern experience, I learned a lot of teaching skills including how to start with a lesson with energetic voice and exciting contents to attract children; how to make eye contact throughout the whole class and leading the students’ performance; how to project my voice and organize my lesson better. For instance, in my final teaching video, I started my class in a different way that I tried to introduce my name and let them guess which part is my family name in order to attract the attraction of whole class and my voice projecting with more confident. Moreover, I using the hands gestures and body movements more than the beginning of semester to help demonstrate my points. I was continually learning from Dr. Sullivan and my classmates of all those teaching strategies and trying to blend them into my own teaching styles throughout this semester.
For my Art of Teaching class during Spring semester, I will focus on improving my conducting skills and refining the use of teaching language and my voice projecting.
For this group video, we have four group members who are Christian Lopez, Natalie Rose, Brittany O’Quin and me to present it.
Actually, we have some parts in the videos which is especially effective. Firstly, our demonstrations of instruments in our video are solid and clear because we make a long transition by introducing the instrumental types (woodwind, brass and string) to specific instrument. Moreover, we used the music video with cool and popular songs performing by each specific instrument in order to enhance our instrumental introductions. Secondly, we had a good video editing and arrangement by using description between each transaction of video clips. In this video, I found that my voice need to be brighter and I better prepared a piece of music which is more attractive for middle school students next time.
For the improvement of our video, I think we need to avoid bias questions like “Do you hate math?” into questions such as“ Do you enjoy music?” or “Do you feel boring after class?” etc. On the other hands, we need to avoid the unnecessary repeat of our instrument’s solo in the video editing which makes the video a little boring for students to watch the same thing twice.
For this video project, I think the benefit by working as a group is to share new ideas in order to make the video more diverse and interesting; I can also learn how to make a better arrangement of video recruitment in specific steps. And the disadvantage of working as a group is the differences of level of instrumental playing and ways of expressing ourselves will increase bias attitudes from audience.
The video I have watched is the “Swiper, No Swping!” by Ruchy, David Smith, Jessica and Melissa. The similar thing for their video compares to ours is the using of interesting music and each member had performed a short piece of music for their instrument. However, their project used a story to make great transitions for each instrument just like a game. For example, with notes on a piece of paper for clue in their searching instruments game and they place their instrument in different place and floors of the building. I would like to emulate those interesting games they make in the future. For elementary students and middle school students, they might like the “Swiper, No Swiping!” a lot because of the interesting game and storytelling can attract their attention. However for parents, I think they like our video better because it shows more details of how to play instruments and the introduction of instruments’ types, which seems to be more formal.
For my own part of presentation, I feel very exciting to introduce a secondary instrument that I have learned for only several months. In my opinion, two things that are effective in my presentation is I introduced the wide range of style that guitar can play and using the example of playing chords and single notes on guitar. However, I am still not quite familiar with the position to play it and I need to relearn the all the scales and tones position in order to play the melody of every song I want outside of class or asking sophisticated guitar player like Andrew and Andy for help.
For this teaching video，I am going to do a simple rhythmic teaching about how to use notes like quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes to count music and use their dotted notes to create new music based on original rhythm for elementary students. The reason why I am going to teach the rhythm is nowadays the changing of music tempo is going to be wide-used in composing and creating music structure. Especially for popular music, most of the students just listens to those music for fun instead of analyzing the specific music patterns which makes the music popular.So it is important for students to know how to tell the difference of music with similar melodic movement but distinct rhythm at an early age. Students can actually have their basic sense of what kind of rhythm makes music more interesting. This is my goal of this experience.
The materials I need to use in this experience are popular musics which have very simple rhythm develops into polymeric development in the peak part like “Call me Maybe”. And I will first add some simple interesting body percussion teaching before I start teaching the popular music rhythm. The specific steps in guiding my experience are:
1.Practice and learn how to count the basic notes such as the length differences among different notes, basic converting skill between the quarter, eighth sixteenth etc notes with body percussion method.
2.Learning how to present variations of those basic combination of notes. Finding how variations make a difference between their related basic notes(more energetic, prolonged，tense or relaxed).
3.Let them composed and create their own style of “Call me maybe” with imagination a improvisational rhythm.
The first two steps might be longer time and depended on the process of class and the last one should be quicker after students complete the first two steps. I will also ask students questions of what’s new of their composed music to their related original version？What part of music is their favorite and why？
For the assessment, I only need to play their music in class and get their peers review about each one’s music.No forcible requirement of accuracy of tempo, just focus on how better feeling between the new and the old version. The goal is to let them understand the benefit of using variation of tempo into music.
For future extension，I will try to add more rhythmic composing section into my teaching, see what part of this section is their most interested part and create more inspired activities related their favorite part. I think if students gets more exciting in learning rhythmic days by days, it means they will be easier and more understandable to reach my expectation.
Teaching episode #2 Self Reflection
For my second time of Teaching episode, I actually wanted to follow the core principal of the first teaching episode about the variations of three basic counting notes: quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes and let learners know how the rhythmic changes make the music more interesting than the original one. However, I tried to use some new things like body percussion and pop songs to make the teaching environment more relax and straightforward for them.
In this time teaching, compared to the first time teaching, I used the body percussion to replace the animal’s symbol, so they didn’t feel awkward and too complicated to present those rhythm.
Moreover, the body movements help them more engage into the activities. I make a practice to let all quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes perform simultaneously and let them feel which part of body percussion makes the clearest effect among all, which related to the importance of length differences in music rhythm. The second part is teaching about the variations of basic notes combinations in pop music. I chose “Call me maybe” because of the obvious rhythmic progressions of repeated eighth notes to a diverse and unpredictable doted notes combinations. So I want them to think about the differences of tense and release and improvise based on those movements.
Compared to the last time of teaching, I am less nervous to speak out and learners are more engaging with my topic especially the pop song part. I have learned that the repetition of teaching is definitely important for a better preparations and realization of self teaching skills. Moreover, I feel more confident due to a better preparations.
My Plan for the Teaching Episode #1
For this teaching video，I am going to do a very simple rhythmic teaching about how to use notes like quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes to count music and use their dotted notes to create new music based on original rhythm for elementary students. The reason why I am going to teach the rhythm is nowadays the changing of music tempo is going to be wide-used in composing and creating music structure. So it is important for students to know how to tell the difference of music with similar melodic movement but distinct rhythm at an early age. Students can actually have their basic sense of what kind of rhythm makes music more interesting. This is my goal of this experience.
The materials I need to use in this experience are really children songs which have very simple rhythm without polymeric development. Students will start to create their favorite rhythm by themselves based on the simple rhythm after gradually learning other variations of music rhythm throughout my experience.
The specific steps in guiding my experience are:
1.Practice and learn how to count the basic notes such as the length differences among different notes, basic converting skill between the quarter, eighth sixteenth etc notes and realize the relationship between rhythm and meter.
2.Learning how to present variations of those basic notes like dotted, triple. Finding how variations make a difference between their related basic notes(more energetic, prolonged，tense or relaxed).
3.Let them composed and create their own style of music.
The first two steps might be longer time and depended on the process of class and the last one should be quicker after students complete the first two steps. I will also ask students questions of what’s new of their composed music to their related original version？What part of music is their favorite and why？
For the assessment, I only need to play their music in class and get their peers review about each one’s music.No forcible requirement of accuracy of tempo, just focus on how better feeling between the new and the old version. The goal is to let them understand the benefit of using variation of tempo into music.
For future extension，I will try to add more rhythmic composing section into my teaching, see what part of this section is their most interested part and create more inspired activities related their favorite part. I think if students gets more exciting in learning rhythmic days by days, it means they will be easier and more understandable to reach my expectation.
Teaching episode #1 Self Reflection
In my teaching video, I actually planed to start teaching how the rhythm changes based on the variations of three basic counting notes: quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes and my goal is to let learners know how the changing of basic rhythm in music makes the original one more interesting.
During the teaching time, I actually tried to use animals’ names to label different notes like “horse” for quarter note because it has one syllable, “monkey” for two eighth notes because it has two syllables and “elephant”for four sixteenth notes because it has four syllables. And then I made those three combination into the rhythm changes. Actually, it was good to see all of the learners were quite engaging in performing the rhythm and they all knew how to put the rhythm of “horse”,”monkey”and “elephant” into my given rhythm and “Brother John” song. Another thing that I like is the later part of creating their own rhythm which based on the “Brother John”. It is hard to remember the length of all labeled animals and combined them together, but the result of their works were all accurate and creative.
There were still some parts which didn’t run well. First, I forgot to make a introduction of my goal and let them think about what is the difference between the original music and their created music and let them share their thought. Second, it is running out of time limit. I used to much time in introducing the counting methods and rhythm changes and not enough time for them to create and discuss. Third, my voice and words are not emphasizing and understandable enough to make learners confused especially the labeled animals part.
For teaching episode #2, I will try to count the time limit more accurately and practice to make my voice louder than this time. I will put more interesting activities than just demonstrate the differences.
This is a video about teaching a simple Chinese melody piano song.
transcript：
Hi eveyone，today I am gonna teach you how to play a simple Chinese song on keyboard. Especially for anyone who has a piano experience will feel easy to play this song. So let‘s STARTED!
OK! Let’s started! The first thing you need to learn is the Chinese scale! !
C-D-E-G-A-C! You need to avoid F and B, very different from the western music.
Then I will perform this simple Chinese song!
The first thing you need to do is to seperate that song into fourth part!
If you feel comfortable for fourth part practice, you can move into a seperated two part pratice!
Then, you will feel good after practicing it(completed song) for several time!
You can show this to your friends and your family and it will be very interesting!
William Bai 