Marion Anderson Lesson Plan

Lesson #1

Read Aloud

Performance Standard: MMSIC.7 – Evaluating music and music performances

MMSIC.8 – Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts

MMSIC.9 – Understanding music in relation to history and culture

Objectives: Identify and describe relationships between music, dance arts, theatre arts, and visual arts.

Identify and comprehend new vocabulary used in the text.

Demonstrate literacy skills through reading and discussing musical settings of varied literature.

Supplies: When Marian Sang

By: Pam Munoz Ryan

                                                                            Music CD

Alpha Boxes worksheet

1. Read the story aloud, showing the pictures after reading each page.
2. During the read aloud, the teacher references many songs in the text by singing the lyrics. The students joined in singing “My Country ‘tis of Thee” during the reading of the text.
3. Students discussed the new vocabulary notated in the alpha boxes and developed a definition of their own with a partner.
4. The class discussed all of the new vocabulary words that they encountered in the reading of the text. Student-created definitions were shared and discussed and the book was summarized through student-led discussion.
5. Vocabulary: opulent; trepidation; metropolitan; momentous; and contralto

Lesson Two

When Marian Sang

Performance Standard: MMSIC.7 – Evaluating music and music performances

MMSIC.8 – Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts

MMSIC.9 – Understanding music in relation to history and culture

Objectives: Identify and describe relationships between music, dance arts, theatre arts, and visual arts.

Demonstrate literacy skills through reading and discussing musical settings of varied literature.

The students will study the correlation of reading phonemes and singing phonemes.

Discuss stylistic characteristics of a varied repertoire, including world music and analyze vocal performance.

Discuss the relationship between music, world events, history, and culture.

Supplies: When Marian Sang

                                                                           
                                                                            Music CD

Comprehension Worksheet

1. The students will independently answer the questions on the worksheet.
2. The class will discuss the answers to the questions.

Extension activity: Students will listen to a recording of Marian Anderson to analyze the classical techniques used and observe the opulent range that is displayed in the song. The Students practiced the techniques using “My Country ‘tis of Thee” from the book. The vowels of singing were discussed and the syllables were broken down into phonemes. The students practiced these to develop correct singing diction.  This method works very well for ESOL students as well as English speaking students. We use hand signals for the vowels and extended the vowels sounds into syllabic formation.

The next time I teach this lesson I will focus on the comprehension of the text and use a different worksheet for vocabulary. I feel that the KWL chart might be more helpful with the content that I want them to focus the most on. The alpha boxes were not as functional for the higher level vocabulary.