The Lesson
This lesson was an integration of Math and Music. The purpose was to review some mathematical concepts with the class in preparation for the upcoming CST. I also wanted to show my students that learning doesn't just happen from listening to the teacher speak or reading books, it can also happen through other venues like music. The students really enjoyed watching the videos and learned right away the rule for adding and subtracting decimals after hearing the "Decimal Song" once. The students also had a great time hearing each other's creations. As a reward, I compiled everyone's songs into a booklet and distributed it out to everyone the week before the math CST.
I had spent around an hour recording the "Order of Operations" song at home the day before the lesson. It was well worth it because the students really enjoyed it and gave me a rounding applause when the song was over.
Reflection
I think the music lesson went extremely well. I was a little nervous about how the students would react to my recording but they really enjoyed it which raised my own self esteem. I’m thinking of making it a summer project of mine to take my recording and make it into a video just to add a bit more creativity to it. The students also really enjoyed the other songs I showed them. Every single student in the classroom was engaged which is not usually the case in most lessons. I have made the lyrics books for the class but have not passed it out to them yet. A lot of students will ask me when I will be passing them out which shows me their enthusiasm for this lesson.
However, there were still some downfalls. Although I had some students who were extremely excited about the project, there were others who had no interest in even attempting to write a song. I’m not exactly sure why they didn’t attempt but there were at least three groups who did not write a song at all. I had given them a week to work together to create a song. A week did not seem to be enough time for some of the groups. I also noticed that some groups needed some pushing in order to get started, but once that happened they were able to work on their own.
If I were to teach this lesson again, I would officially make it a project that has a grade attached to it. I would send home a letter to the parents explaining what the project is and encourage parents to help out. I realize that writing a song is a difficult task for even adults to do so I don’t expect the fourth graders to do it on their own. I would also provide more time for students to work on their projects. It might even be a good idea to assign based on math units which would make the project year-long. Students would already be divided into groups in the beginning of the school year. The groups would then take turns writing a song about a math topic that was taught at the end of each math unit. This way, the class could have a collection of songs by the time testing begins.