Granger Ottley

Dominick Ferrara

ME-311

07 April 2023

High School Lesson Plan Reflection

As expected, I could see an improvement in the high school lesson from the middle

school lesson. I ran into a few similar issues, but because of the type of class and the type of

students that I would be teaching, the lesson was more appropriate. Generally my lesson plan

and teaching strategy was good, but as always there is room for improvement.

The content of my lesson plan worked well, and the order of activities was effective. My

“Do Now” worked as I hoped it would (Aside from Matt actually being able to sing the

example). I like introducing a subject that seems difficult and get the students thinking about

approach strategies before we discuss how to do it. Then by the end of the lesson, the students

realized it was never as intimidating as they thought. I continued the lesson by explaining the

purpose and applications of sight singing and audiation, so that the students aren’t just thinking

about the AP Test. However, I still refer to the requirements of the test because it is the

culmination of the class, and it is necessary to teach the students how to take the test as well.

From there I broke down the lesson into three strategies, identifying, analyzing, and practicing. I

would explain the strategy, then have the students practice the strategy, and I kept them engaged

by having them answer my questions for a number of different examples. The end of the lesson

resulted in them singing a few easy examples, reviewing AP Test expectations, and giving them

a few extra non-specific tips. All-in-all the material was good and I achieved the objectives that

I stated in my lesson plan.

 That all went well, but there are a few things that I would fix when teaching this lesson

again. To start, I need to get the students singing earlier on in the lesson. I ran into this same

issue with my middle school drum lesson. There was too much talking and not enough doing in

the early part of the lesson. I think I may have underestimated the capabilities of the students,

which is something I’m sure I will continue to do until I have actual students. To correct this, I

would start with the easy examples that we sang at the end, and introduce the “Identify, Analyze,

Practice” strategies together. There is really no need to drag it out and introduce them

separately. Another issue that we discussed in class was teaching the students to identify the key

signature for the major scale only. I learned this way, so I just naturally thought to teach this

way. In retrospect, it makes more sense to teach students to identify both the major and minor

key signatures and then determine the key based on the melody. Lastly, after teaching, I would

change the order of the melodies that I presented in class. The ones we actually did sing were

too easy to end the lesson. If I had gotten the students to sing those examples at the beginning,

we could have definitely done more advanced melodies by the end of the lesson. The bottom

line is that the ideas were strong and the content was good for the most part, but pacing continues

to be something that I need to work on.