8/10/2019 Task 1 - Raul Santana

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Raúl Santana - Task 1D - General lesson Observation

For this task I observed a group music lesson from a school, with childrenaround 8-9 years old. It was in the British Junior School in Leidschenveen. Theclass was 50 minutes long. The lesson was given in the 21 of October.

There were around 20 children in the lesson, sitting in banches, with 3chldren in each one. That was already something remarkable for me, becausewhen I was that young I always had my own desk for every subject, but I thinkmusic lessons are more interactive, so it's more important to have more space andmore freedom of movement.

The room was full of music lessons material. Shelves full of percussioninstruments and flutes, posters about the instruments and composers, a keyboardfor the teacher to play melodies for the singing part of the class, an the mostimpressive object of the room: an electronic whiteboard, where the teacher wasshowing slides that she prepared prior (with that you can see how much sheprepared the lesson, I thought she needs at least 30 min for preparing the structureof every lesson and the slides). That is quite relevant, because she has absolutefreedom for connecting the visual material with concepts (it use to be better toconnect concepts (words) with images, and that is more difficult to do it when youhave a normal blackboard). Also with the electronic device you don't need to writeso you can be looking at the the students when you are talking, and noticing whatthey are doing. Also because there is a computer she can connect to the internetand put the song she wants in every moment, instead of having the song saved in aphisical device. This component (the electronic blackboard) is a nice exampleabout how technology can change the way we learn and we teach, and thereforethe music we do.

The teaching rhythm of the class was quite high. The lesson started with thelistening of Autumn by Antonio Vivaldi (a part of it). After that the teacher asked thepupils what was the name of that piece and she tried to relate the piece with thepiece the children were working last week, October. I found that interesting,working on music that kids can relate with concepts or circustances from theirnormal life. Then it's not an isolated knowledge, so it will get easier on their minds.During the lesson the teacher was doing that often, relating musical knowledgewith other subjects on their daily life.

After that she was asking what instruments there were sounding in therecording, and when the children were saying the names she asked them to imitatethe gesture of the playing of the instrument. She was also talking about musicalcharacteristics as the pitch of every instrument and the different timbres. Then shereproduced again the piece and asked the children to direct the orquestra, so theycould feel the rhythm and the measure.

There were other parts of the class. They were singing some songs by heartwith the piano accompaniment. At the end the teacher was focus in teaching how todraw the G clef. That means that she didn't want to teach before musical reading,

she prefered to start later so the students could develop first their musical habilities(the same than learning the native language).