MUS 335, UPDATED Fall 2019

Elementary Methods and Materials

Dr. Campbell
Lesson Planning
Educators need to set goals for their classes—they must create a curriculum that can be
implemented for their teaching situation. The curriculum is guided by National, State, and District level
documents of the standards, that often describe the goals for student development in an academic
discipline. The exact sequencing of the curriculum in music is dependent upon the musical background of
the students in a class, the number of students in the classroom during instruction, and the frequency and
duration of music each week, and assessment data. With all of these factors in mind, a teacher can begin
to plan a single lesson. Lesson planning is the process of organizing the concepts and materials to
facilitate student growth in their abilities, knowledge, and understandings in music.

I. OBJECTIVES:
Learning objectives are statements of goals for students. For learning objectives to be sound, they
should be SMART (Doran, 1981; often attributed to Drucker, 1954). The statement of objectives in a
lesson plan helps to focus the educator and students on what is important within a given learning
experience. Objectives that include verbs from Bloom’s taxonomy will also be useful because they will
guide the educator to appropriately evaluate student success.
Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
Achievable (agreed, attainable).
Relevant (reasonable, realistic, and resourced, results-based).
Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive)*
*This is implicit if the objectives are for a single class meeting time, but should be discussed if
the objectives will take more than one lesson to achieve.
For example, Students will be able to (SWAT):
--sing “Lemonade” on text with correct pitches
--write a four beat composition using known rhythms (ta, ti-ti, tika-tika, and rest)
--compare the rhythm of two known songs
Notice that the verbs are statements of anticipated effects of instruction, they are not
statements of activities. The verbs selected describe what students are able to learn as a result of
instruction. The verbs are also the part of the goal that will be measured.
Here are some examples that might sound like learning objectives, but are not:
Students will be able to:
--listen to “Kangaroo” from Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns
--watch the video “The Secret Life of the Child’s Brain”
--finish ta, ti-ti worksheet
These are activities that the students will do, but they do not describe what the student will
learn as the result of instruction.
A good objective describes how the students must act on with materials they are learning
and how they will transfer or expand on their learning. Objectives stated this way move beyond
the “Knowledge” level of Bloom’s taxonomy. Additionally, students should be encouraged to
transfer previous learning from music and other courses to extend their understanding.
Students will be able to:
--read ta and ti-ti rhythms and create/write/perform their own rhythm patterns
--identify the differences between lullabies and marches: soft/loud, slow/fast,
smooth/jerky
Types of objectives:
Educational Psychologist Benjamin Bloom identified three domains of learning
objectives: 1) cognitive, 2) psychomotor, and 3) affective.
1. Cognitive objectives are what a student will know, but this goes beyond
memorization to understanding. When a student understands, they can apply their
knowledge in new situations. Thus, good educators should provide their students with
knowledge that guides them to think for themselves in any given situation. Verbs for
cognitive objectives are: to repeat (echo, clap, sing), to respond (call and response,
question/answer) to identify, to create, to improvise, to evaluate, to describe, to
distinguish.

2. Psychomotor objectives are what a student will be able to do. In a music classroom,
many activities, such as games, dances, body percussion, and performance (of voice
or instrument) are in the psychomotor domain. Verbs for psychomotor are: to
clap/snap/patschen, to dance, to walk, to skip, to perform using two hands, to perform
from standard notation.

3. Affective objectives assess attitudes, feelings, and dispositions that students are
expected to develop as a result of instruction. Affective learning is not separate from
cognitive learning, as attitudes of a student often encroach on their abilities to
perform cognitive objectives. It is also the most difficult to assess because while
actions and behaviors are guided by a person’s feelings, no human can “see” the
feelings of another. The affective domain helps students to appreciate, participate,
care, and empathize. Verbs for affective objectives are: to accept, to compare, to
react, to demonstrate*. Demonstrate can be a helpful verb because demonstrating
caring/kindness/appreciation can help make dispositions measurable.

The domains: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective are all related to each other.
Therefore, when we create objectives for lessons, we should choose some from each domain.
Objectives should be guided by State and/or National Learning Standards of the given discipline.

II. ACTIVTIES:
Within the lesson plan, an educator should outline all of the activities that will guide
student learning. Information on needed materials, props, music, and technology should be
available on the written plan in case the educator needs to share a lesson plan with another
instructor, an administrator, or a colleague. The learning activities should be described in as
much detail as the educator needs to guide the lesson appropriately. Individual adminstrators,
school districts, or certification programs will require different levels of detail within a lesson
plan, from fully-scripted to simple bullet points.
When planning a lesson, remember that greeting and closure activities help build a
dynamic and healthy classroom atmosphere. The warm-up activity should be creative and should
relate to the concept(s) that the educator will facilitate during the lesson. This activity must
capture the attention of the students and prepare them for the lesson. The closure (final activity)
should leave the students with a feeling of accomplishment or provide time for personal practice.
Class and individual performances, dances, and certain games are good closer activities.
 Further, when planning for musical instruction, you must keep in mind the attention and
memory spans of your students. Our short term memories are finite, and therefore, episodic and
semantic memory must be utilized to help move musical information and abilities to our long
term memory. *A good rule of thumb is the age of the student plus or minus five minutes.
Activities that use multiple modalities of instruction (visual, aural, kinesthetic), that include
affective components and those that include repetition are all more likely to be encoded more
efficiently into long-term memory.
Consequently, children learn best if the periods of concentration are short, frequent, and
intense, and are followed by periods of relaxation and play. For example, if learning activities
transition from dancing to sitting and reading, to playing a game, then a balance is created
between concentration and relaxation.
A. Accommodations, Extensions, Modifications
When planning a lesson, an educator must consider all of the individuals in their
classroom. Some students will have Individual Education Plans or 504s that require
changes to certain aspects of instruction during the lesson, materials/instruments used,
and/or they level or type of evaluation. While the educator is required by law to
provide terms of IEPs/504s, you should also consider which students benefit from
individualized components of lessons, generally.
B. Differentiation
When an educator considers student choice and learning styles, they are differentiation in
their classroom setting. “assumes that different learners have differing needs and proactively
plans lessons that provide a variety of ways to ‘get at’ and express learning. The teacher may
still need to fine-tune instruction for some learners, but because the teacher knows the varied
learner needs within the classroom and selects learning options accordingly, the chances are
greater that these experiences will be an appropriate fit for most learners. Effective
differentiation is typically designed to be robust enough to engage and challenge the full
range of learners in the classroom. In a one-size-fits-all approach, the teacher must make
reactive adjustments whenever it becomes apparent that a lesson is not working for some of
the learners for whom it was intended.” (Tomlinson, 2017)
C. Follow-up of lesson or activity
When planning parts of or whole lesson plan, you must consider that some
individuals or groups will complete tasks more quickly than other groups. If a single
lesson plan is to be taught to multiple groups of students, your fluidity as an instructor
will grow each time you present said lesson. As such, it is vital to document follow-up
options for individual activities as well as sketch work for the next class meeting.

III. EVALUATION:
Assessment and evaluation of student progress are often different in music than
classrooms of other subjects. Music involves more physical, verbal, and affective components,
although reading and writing music should always be a priority as well. Written assessments
must be carefully crafted to be age and developmentally appropriate for the students. Lesson
plans are incomplete without an evaluation component.

A. Assessments tied to Objectives: Regardless of type, duration, or feedback solicited,

all assessments should be tied to objective statements.
B. Feedback: is everywhere, and is both verbal and non-verbal, linguistic, and musical.
Feedback can be transmitted from: educator to student, student to student, instrument
 to student, group to individual, and ensemble to audience, are just a few specific
examples of feedback that exists in a music classroom.
C. Formative assessment: the goal of formative assessment is to monitor student
learning and to provide feedback to both the educator and the student. The educator
collects feedback about specific areas of strength and weakness that can help guide
planning and instruction. The students collect feedback that identifies their strengths
and weakness. Formative assessment is also known as low-stakes or informal
assessment, in that the student typically only receives feedback and/or is worth a low
point value.
D. Summative Assessment: the goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student
learning at the end of a given instructional unit or amount of chronological time by
comparing the student’s learning to a benchmark or standard.

Example Assessments.

Formative: Students will be able to: (SsWBAT)

--tap the steady beat on heart chart to a known song while being observed and corrected
by the teacher
--verbally identify the different timbres of “The Elephant” and “The Swan” in Carnival
of the Animals by Saint-Saëns receiving written feedback from the instructor
--read and play BAG notes in sight-reading excerpt while being observed and corrected
by a peer
Summative:
--Kindergarten SsWBAT: circle the correct tempo for 4 unknown pieces of music
(circling a cheetah for fast and a snail for slow) teacher will provide written score and corrective
feedback
--Second grade SsWBAT: create and notate four measure of four meter rhythm (using ta,
ti-ti, and z) and perform their creation with 90% accuracy. Teacher will provide corrective
written feedback and faclitatate affective verbal feedback from their peers using a class-created-
checklist for performance behaviors.
--Fifth grade SsWBAT: write a 2 page report comparing and contrasting the elements of
music in the Classical period and the Romantic period using known musical terms with correct
grammar and spelling. Teacher will provide written feedback given assignment rubric.

IV. Final thoughts.

Your lesson plan will demonstrate that you as a music educator have considered with
meaningful intent the pre-knowledge and skills that your students bring into the classroom that
day; how your students will move forward in learning musical concepts and meeting
State/National standards; how your students will take part in various types of assessment; and
how you will provide accommodations, extensions, and differentiation to support various
students’ needs.
In music education, as in all language education (including mathematical language),
students will be able to do before they are able to understand/comprehend how/why individual
musical elements are maniptulated to create given whole. Just as a child will speak with
lignuistical accuracy in full sentences and paragraphs before, and will have amassed thousands of
hours of listening to the spoken word before they can speak themselves or learn the complex
action of writing or reading novels, so goes musical understanding. As such, while music
educators should understanding Universal Lesson Design, a how it can benefit specific
disciplines, they should continue to advocate for sound before sight learning in the classroom as
it mimics most closely the natural process of linguistic development.

References:
Bannister, S. (2002). Developing Objectives and Relating them to Assessment.
http://teaching.uncc.edu/sites/teaching.uncc.edu/files/media/files/file/GoalsAndObjectives/Devel
opingLearningOutcomes.pdf

Carnegie Mellon University. (2015). “What is the difference between formative and summative
assessment?” https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html

Doran, G. T. (1981). There’sa SMART way to write management’s goals and

objectives. Management review, 70(11), 35-36.

Hitchcock, C., Meyer, A., Rose, D., & Jackson, R. (2002). Providing new access to the general
curriculum: Universal design for learning. Teaching exceptional children, 35(2), 8-17.
http://www.eiltsfamily.org/udl_at/resources/Universal%20Design%20for%20Learning/UDL_Ov
erview.pdf

Iowa State University Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching;

http://www.celt.iastate.edu/pdfs-docs/teaching/RevisedBloomsHandout.pdf

Kay, M. (2013). Sound before symbol: Developing literacy through music. Sage.

Krathwohl, D. R., & Anderson, L. W. (2009). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing:
A revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman.
https://doubledumplings.com/a-taxonomy-for-learning-teaching-and-assessing-a-revision-of-
blooms-taxonomy-of-educational-obje-ebooks-small-project-lorin-w-anderson-david-r-
krathwohl.pdf

Marzano, R. J. (2001). Designing a New Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Experts in

Assessment. Corwin Press, Inc., A Sage Publications Company.

Milikova, S. (2016). “Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning.”

http://www.crlt.umich.edu/gsis/p2_5

Tomlinson, C. A. (2017). How to differentiate instruction in academically diverse classrooms.

ASCD. http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/117032/chapters/What-Differentiated-
Instruction-Is%E2%80%94and-Isn't.aspx