Overall, I thought our lesson went really well it connected to our subject of music in social science and I thought our concept of drumming around the world was very unique. We did a good job in terms of researching background information about the specific type of African drumming we wanted to bring into the classroom and provided a short clip from a video that connected the song we were learning and tied together with our social science concept. The king is coming song we played with our students incorporated playing a tone, slap, and bass in the drumming pattern. I could have been better in terms of memorizing historical facts I wanted to bring up in order for the lesson to go smoother. I also read the information off my phone and in hindsight, it would have been more professional to have written it down on a piece of paper instead. I thought we did a good job of making sure all our students were on the same page as to what the difference between a tone slap and bass were before moving ahead with learning the song. When playing the song we taught what rhythm was and how to incorporate it within the students drumming.
In terms of incorporating the first peoples’ principles of learning, I thought we accomplished this. The principal that we focused on was Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story. Learning involves patience and time. Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place). We definitely included the history and story aspects when we talked about the history of the djembe drum and our song. This was especially shown when we talked about the importance of using wood for the djembe drum because it connects to the family tree which connects the youth (fruit and leaves) the family (branches and the trunk) and the ancestors (the roots underground). This connectedness was also an important aspect of our lesson plan because it connects to western African historical culture. We also started our lesson with a territorial acknowledgment which I thought went very well. Further, we allowed our students to explore the drums themselves and explore the instrument in an experiential way. This I feel like could have been more structured to avoid it being chaotically loud but the experimental process was definitely valuable.
All in all, I feel like our lesson plan successfully tied music and social sciences together in a lesson that incorporated the first peoples principles of learning in a productive way.
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