Today in my secondary methods class I had the opportunity to get up a teach 10 minutes of the 3 day lesson that I had written on "rhythm". For my 10 minutes I decided that I wanted to have the students do an activity that used their knowledge of rhythms in compound meter.
Overall, I think I had a good lesson planned but I could have executed it better than I did. While I think I was confident and clear in my instructions, I made two noticeable mistakes. The first mistake was not having a clear on the objective of the lesson. The point was to have students recognize, memorize, perform, and write rhythms that they had been practicing in compound meter. I think that if I had done a few things even slightly differently the objective would have been more clear and there would have been a better understanding among the students as to what they were doing. I should have set more restrictions on the lesson, this was my second mistake. I originally told the class that it was going to be common rhythms in compound meter but I wasn't going to tell them the time signature or the number of measures. After a minute I realized that this was too challenging and they would be more successful with a little more information. I then told them that the rhythms would be in 6/8 time and two measures long. By narrowing down the objective like this, the students were quickly more engaged and successful.
I think I planned a good activity that when put in the right context is really good for helping students put their knowledge to practical use. I just need to be more clear, in both my own head as well as the way I explain to the students, about what I specifically want to accomplish and how it's going to happen.
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