Lesson Reflection

This lesson went even better than I expected. After getting a glimpse of Casey and Kelsey’s lesson on Monday, I modified our plan a bit to make their plan more transferrable, and I think this worked well for both groups.

Incorporating videos into our lesson was really helpful for keeping the students engaged. It helped them to evaluate the music as well, reflecting on where they had heard the pieces before. I was very appreciative of the students’ responses, which were exactly what we were looking for, as well as some we weren’t expecting, which made the lesson more interesting.

I think our pacing was quite good, as we kept things moving, and covered enough material to meet our objective and allowed the students to participate sufficiently. I could have been stricter on how the students answered questions (raising hands instead of just letting them talk); however, I did acknowledge most of the raised hands I saw.

In my opinion, I provided enough feedback, but I need to make it more specific and varied. In the video, I counted how many times I used “okay” as feedback, and came up with a number greater than ten. The positive feedback I used was not very specific; however, my used of specific negative feedback was better, mostly consisting of motions or comments that related to the students talking too much or misbehaving.

As for delivery, I think I did pretty well. I was comfortable being in front of the class and tried my best to keep their attention. I attempted to cut off audio and video clips when as they lost focus. Doing this was helpful for creating better pacing throughout the lesson.

If I had to do this lesson again, I would probably try to vary the music even more, using samples from Baroque and Renaissance eras as well as the Classical, Romantic and Contemporary periods. I would also try to pay more attention to the behavioral issues in the classroom as well as be more diligent about asking for hands to be raised before taking answers to questions.