Name: Joel Hernandez

District: Los Angeles Unified School District

School: Nora Sterry Elementary School
Subject: General Music
Grade Level: Kindergarten
Date of Lesson Taught: 10/28/15
Lesson Plan no.: 2
National Standards For Music Education:
Make and Plan- Select and develop musical ideas for defined purposes and contexts
MU:Cr2.1.Ka With guidance, demonstrate and choose favorite musical ideas.
EvaluateandRefineEvaluate and refine selected musical ideas to create musical work(s) that meet

appropriate criteria.
MU:Cr3.1.Ka - With guidance, apply personal, peer, and teacher feedback in refining personal
musical ideas.

California Visual and Performing Arts Content Standards

2.0

Creative Expression
2.2 Sing age appropriate songs

3.0
3.2 sing and play various singing games from other cultures
4.0
4.1 Create movements that correspond to different music
Objectives:
1. By the end of the children develop a sense of steady beat.
2. To develop some basic knowledge of the Culture of West Africa,
namely Ghana
3. To have familiarity with the names of percussion instruments
4. To acquire knowledge of basic playing techniques of percussion egg
shakers
Equipment and Supplies
1. About 20+ percussion egg shakers

2. Power Point Slides showing West African culture, food, dance,

clothing and scenery
3. Random Percussion (about 5 sets of percussion varying from
drums, shakers and tambourines)
4. Song lyrics to Obwisana traditional folk tune
5. Single Drum for Steady Beat
Procedures
1. Open with good morning song
2. Practice clapping in a circle then clapping their neighbors hand to
the pulse of a beat
3. Then bring out egg shakers for learning to play in a steady pulse
4. Next part will be the immersion learning for Obwisana
5. Transition to singing Obwisana song traditional childrens song
of Ghana
6. After that combine the shaker pulsations with the song
Obwisana to play the African circle stick game where we pass
the stick to our neighbor.
7. Next transition to handing out percussion instruments also make
sure I stay engaged with the class and ask questions.
8. Have 5 or so students play drums while the others dance in a
circle.
9. We will name each percussion instrument that I hand out then I
will show the correct technique in which to play the instrument.
10.
Next I will show slides of Ghanaian culture ranging from
food, music, clothes and scenery.
11.
At this point I will have taught a simple Ghanaian motion of
dance for the children to emulate.
12.
There will be a section where traditional Ghanaian music
will play in the background and I will have children free style
there dance movements.
13.
Lastly I will rap up the lesson by asking what we learned in
class today ranging from the steady beats, the song we learned
in Ghanaian, the names of various percussion instruments and
the dance move we learned that helped keep the students in
tempo to music.
14.
Close with goodbye song.
Evaluation:
Few children in the lesson seemed to retain any information from
the lesson if any. Most of the children seemed too distracted from a

lack of stimulation to the topics presented and werent retaining any of

the information by the end of the lesson. The instruction used on them
was not adequate. As a teacher one needs to be able to express joy
and disappointment to effectively run the class in the direction needed
for child involvement. This aspect in particular was lacking and the
children quickly could get away with not following directions. This is all
the more important since this class has had no class instruction prior to
this year. Largely due to lack of preparation before hand this lesson
was effective. When asked about what country they had learned about
there wasnt even a response, which highlighted how most of the
information was not passed down well. The slide show also was not
well presented. As a child if you are to imagine yourself there in a new
country, it must believable but the instruction was not adequate in
helping the children loose themselves in the imagination process and
this section fell flat. As stated before, the students retained little from
the subject of Ghanaian culture.
Extension:
In the future when teaching this type of lesson, its important to
remember that when dealing with very children motor functionality will
impede any elaborate instruction of movement so very simple
movements at the beginning is imperative. For example, having the
children line up one after the other and clap first, turn around, and clap
there neighbors hand would have been the ideal way to start off with
teaching the passing aspect of the circle song. Taking into
consideration the childrens knowledge as well is important. Most
children at this age do not read well, so having man slides where
reading is necessary is not prudent. Also as a general side note, make
sure that everything typed out is spelled correctly. This lesson could be
really fun in the future dont give up on it.