My group and I collaboratively made a lesson plan for music in math. We embedded “Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and sense of space)” from the First Peoples Principles of Learning into our lesson. We did this by connecting words in the song with dance moves. Everyone sang along together and those that were comfortable performing the moves did so by choice. Of those who were comfortable, we invited ten volunteers to demonstrate the value of numbers by performing the song and dance moves in groups sized according to the corresponding lyric being sang. Depending on the space available students needed to understand safety concerns when dancing close to others. During the lesson, students were prompted to find their own space in the room and sit or stand while participating in the activity. At the end of the activity, one of my colleagues teaching the lesson asked reflective questions to the class relating the value of numbers to our activity. This activity is meant to encourage active participation and emphasize the value of numbers by representing the value by the number of students dancing at the given time. I believe I contributed a fair amount even though I was not there for the teaching of the lesson. During the brainstorming of activities for our lesson plan, I posed critical questions to ensure that the activity we chose was meaningful and interesting. This lead to a more engaging activity. I actively listened to everyone’s ideas in the group and suggested that we combine ideas from each member of my group into one activity. I explained how we could incorporate the idea of inclusivity into our activity after we had decided on it. I then typed out the full explanation of the lesson in our plan so that it was clear. I made sure that if someone else who picked up the lesson plan would be able to accurately teach the lesson the way I had visualized it in my head. I also came up with the introductory phrase to start the lesson. During the class time allotted to this assignment, I actively participated in ideas and research that was typed out by the designated typer. I wrote out the few required resources and checked with my group to see if I had missed any. I thought of one of the two ways to modify the lesson for students with personalized learning needs. My two stars and a wish for the teaching of the lesson: My wish is to emphasize that the reason we dived the group of ten students into twos was to demonstrate the value of numbers visually This allows students to draw the connection to numbers by noticing the group size increasing as the numbers in the song increased. My first star is how effective the repetition was in the scaffolding of learning the lyrics. This is especially important for the intended age level of this lesson. My second star is how they regrouped the students into a circle to conclude the activity to give everyone an equal chance to be seen and emphasize the strong relationship the class had which I believe is the number one reason the participation rate was so high for this activity.
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