Lesson One Analysis

In this lesson, the class had a discussion about the importance of film in music and
began gathering preliminary ideas which would aid them as they began to compose their own
music for a film scene. We did this through the use of several videos in class which prompted
talking points in discussion. In these discussions the class focused mainly on the idea that music
can have a great impact on the mood conveyed in film. We watched a video titled “How Music
Affects Film,” in which the same movie scene is scored in several different styles, each of which
drastically changes the views perception of the scene. I explained to the students that our
project would be accomplishing something similar. We then watched the video that we would
be working with during this set of lessons, titled “Getting to Know Your Emotions” from the
popular movie Inside Out. We created a storyboard to accompany the video that helped to
gather the students’ thoughts throughout the video. The video is split up into several sections
each introducing one of five emotions, and the class will be writing different music to go with
each section of the video. It can be heard in my video that I am asking the class what words
they think of to pair with the different emotions (joy, sadness, anger, etc.), since the video deals
with several different emotions.
To accompany the descriptive words that students used with each emotion, we also
decided on different musical terms that could accurately describe each emotion shown in the
video. For example, we decided if each section should be fast or slow and also major or minor.
Because this lesson was very straightforward and the students were primarily filling in a
worksheet that took minimal effort, I thankfully did not need to modify my lesson at all. The
students were very receptive to the directions I was giving them and they had some good
feedback and ideas during this lesson.
During the lesson, I monitored student learning by continuously asking for
participation and feedback from the class. I did this by engaging the class in discussion
throughout the entire lesson and by asking each student individual questions over the course of
the lesson. This was an effective way to monitor student learning, because each student was
engaged in multiple ways during the lesson. I utilized full group response as a means for
monitoring learning in this lesson because the material in this lesson was not particularly
difficult, and I was confident that my students would comprehend the material in this lesson.
Throughout the course of the entire lesson, I also monitored learning by constantly assessing
how interested my students were in the lesson. I have found over the course of this semester
that if students are interested in the lesson, they are more likely to retain the information and
the learning is more effective.
Because today’s lesson went so well, I feel really good going into the remainder of this
set of lessons. The only thing I am concerned about is that this is a class that sometimes does
need some prompting to be confident in the information that they already know. I will need to
be very encouraging during the next lessons and will need to continuously assure my students
that they are being successful during the composition process. Because the remainder of the
lessons depend on the more creative side of making music, I need to be sure that I cater those
lessons to my students’ needs. However, I am confident that my students will be engaged in the
remainder of this set of lessons and that my students will be motivated to create and perform. I
have tailored the composition process in a way that my students will very much be creating
something wholly their own, just with several guidelines.