Lisa Silberhorn

April 26, 2002

Psych 205

Dr. Mueller

While exploring the New York Times archive of lesson plans I stumbled upon one which can’t decide if it’s a lesson about chamber music or the basic periods of music literature. This lesson plan can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/19990625friday.html?searchpv=learning_lessons. “Back to the Classics,” first gives the students an article to read and discuss, then requires the students to independently learn a brief overview of the five periods of music history, breaking down each period into the characteristics it possesses, as well as the composers, which are predominant during each era.

The lesson begins with student free writing in their journals about images and buzzwords that the term ‘classical music’ brings to mind. They are also asked to write down any classical composers they can identify. This appears to act as a way of assessing individual students’ current schemas of classical music, as well as allowing them to self-regulate their ideas of what classical music is to them. The students then share their journals with each other and begin to write common ideas within the class on the board. This step allows students to see what perceptions they share with their peers, and could be considered their current schema.

The same step is repeated, however instead of coming up with ideas to define classical music, students are asked to define chamber music. After some discussion, the teacher gives the class information from Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia, defining chamber music as, “instrumental music for an ensemble, usually ranging from two to about ten players, with one player for each part and all parts of equal importance. Such music was originally meant for private performance. Public concerts of chamber music were initiated only in the 19th century." The teacher then guides the class into a discussion about different types of ‘classical music’ including symphonic and orchestral music and how they differ. Furthermore, the teacher asks the students why chamber music, according to the given definition, might be less common today. In order to help the class find answers, the teacher passes out an article about a woman who gives chamber music performances on her barge in New York. I feel that this step is time consuming as well as ineffective because the article is irrelevant to the objective of the discussion. It gives very little mention of actual chamber music and gives more detail to the acoustics of the barge. The only thing I like about these last two steps is that the students begin to find the answers for these questions through minimal coaching from the teacher, almost like scaffolding, in the sense that the teacher helps the class to slowly break down the different forms that classical music might take, and helps them to realize the difference. This step however could be done in a shorter period of time, and without the article.

The next step alone is the one that I find the closest to successful learning strategies. One could make an entire lesson out of this one step. The teacher divides the students into five groups, and assigns each group a different musical period. These periods are: Middle Ages/ Renaissance (c.1450-c.1600), Baroque (c.1600-c.1750), Classical (c.1750-c.1820), Romantic (c.1820-c.1900), and 20th Century (c.1900-today.) Each group, independently, must research each period according to the defining characteristics of chamber music in each period these include popularity, common themes among composers, typical performances, and typical instrumentation, and popular composers. The groups must take this information and create a poster and presentation for the rest of the class. This step is effective because not only do the students get to work independently, but they also teach the class what they have learned as a whole, somewhat like peer mediation. Furthermore, the class learns the information through grouping. The class can label smaller pieces of information with a specific musical period. An example of this might be associating Mozart with the Classical period, or being able to classify Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” as Baroque Chamber music due to it’s specific characteristics such as rhythm, and instruments. The students are able to learn the content of this step by grouping the information.

Over all, this lesson wastes a lot of time within the first half. Although the discussion is effective by letting students come up with their own definition for chamber music, allowing for easier remembrance, the discussion of the article does little to develop the students understanding of the genre, and perhaps might confuse them a bit. As I said before, the later half of the lesson is a lot more effective because of the grouping of information, also making it easier to remember and apply. This step is also effective because of the peer teaching, however if the article was omitted from the lesson plan, as a whole I think it would make the entire lesson better.