Anna Featherston

November, 20 2019

Culturally Responsive Literacy Lesson

Introduction

The students in my classroom will be from all kinds of backgrounds and come with all
types of learning capabilities. Because I will be teaching elementary music classes, I
will see all students. In this lesson, I have chosen to work with a kindergarten grade
class. This class has 30 kids in it. Some are advanced learners, some are a little
behind, but most kids are within the range they are supposed to be when it comes to
literacy skills. To successfully teach this class, I have taken into account all of the
different learning styles and backgrounds that come with the students.

Lesson Description

The students are learning a new rhythm in this lesson. They have already learned basic
rhythms, including how to read them in music. In this lesson, students will learn to
count, beat, and recognize the rhythm within music they hear and see. We are learning
to mix quarter notes and eighth notes in one measure.

Before

Before introducing the new material, I will have a metronome playing. I will put up one
flashcard on the board of rhythms they already know at a time. For example, the
flashcard will have four quarter notes on it. The students will be instructed to clap,
count, and/or pat the rhythm together. We will phase through several different
flashcards of rhythms they know to review.

During

We have gotten to the final flashcard, but we haven’t done this one before. It says two
eighth notes/quarter note/two eighth notes/quarter note. There should be confusion
about how to do this because we have not mixed these together in one measure
before. To make it easier, we’ll look at and listen along to the Apple Tree song. It’s an
easy song that has the same new rhythm. The words to the song make it easy to do
the rhythms. Apple is the same as two eighth notes. Tree is the same as a quarter note.
So “apple tree, apple tree…” is the same as two eighth notes/quarter note/two eighth
notes/quarter note. After listening to and singing the song together, we will clap the
rhythms along to the music. Next, we’ll drop out all other rhythms except for when
there are eighth notes and quarter notes mixed one measure, which is the exact same
as our new rhythm.

After

Now that we’ve learned the new rhythm, we’re going to listen for it in different music
that we don’t already know. This music is from different countries all over the world.
While we listen to the songs, we will be sitting on the floor. Before we listen to each
new song, I explain where the song comes from. While we are listening to the song,
students are instructed to stand up when they hear our new rhythm. If they feel like
they can also clap it when it is happening, they may add that.