Elaine Snowden

EDSEC 477
Bridge Text
Objective: Middle school band with confidently perform sight-reading exercises with 85%
rhythm and pitch accuracy as an ensemble.
Materials:
• Sightreadingfactory.com (teacher needs to customize difficulty beforehand because
there are a lot of options)
o This could even be done beforehand, printing out individual parts but the
projector works too
• Projector
• Note value dice (each side has a rhythm such as quarter or half note
• White board (unless projector can also be used as such)
Sequence:
1. Warm-up
a. Beginning in common time, teacher invites several students to roll the note
value dice until there is an even, rhythmic four measure phrase
b. Students perform the rhythm together as an ensemble on concert F
i. Teacher provides feedback on precision, alignment, and overall accuracy
ii. During this time, note values can be reviewed as necessary
c. Repeat first two steps
d. Repeat first step for a third time, but this time, students play the rhythm using
the Bb major scale, each downbeat receives one note for the scale. If there is
something such as a half note or more, students need to think ahead and skip
those notes in the scale.
i. Teacher provides feedback again before giving students another try on
the same rhythm
e. New rhythm, same major scale
2. Transition to Sightreadingfactory.com
a. Beginning on the ensemble unison level one, projecting the randomized parts on
the board
b. Continue same pattern of feedback, review, and repeat as needed.
c. Do students need to repeat a passage before moving on to another one or are
they understanding?
d. Are students challenged enough or should they move up to level two?
3. Transition to rehearsal pieces
a. What skills did students use while sight-reading that can be applied to the piece
they will be performing?
i. Focus, precision, accuracy, alignment, audiation, etc . . .
 This lesson plan is effective in fostering music literacy because it creates the opportunity
for active practice in it. Music literacy is about more than being able to eventually play
through a passage with practice, it is also about improving in your understanding so that
what you need to practice is something new every time rather than the same thing over and
over again. In addition to this, music literacy involves a lot of patterns that students need to
see outside of the same four-minute piece every rehearsal, there needs to be variety and a
sense of unpredictability so that students are practicing actually reading a composition
rather than just repeating something they have done before.
The reason that I set up the lesson as I did was because I wanted to start with safe
before moving into a higher-stakes activity. While the warm-up exercise was still sight-
reading, it was done as a group so that students had time to warm up to the idea and
process what they would need to be doing. This is especially important in a young
(musically-wise) group so that they’re not also having to constantly fight the obstacle of
simply being new to the instrument and can mostly focus on the actual task of sight-
reading. Another part of the sequencing process was moving from safe to the new activity—
that is now more comprehensible because of the previous activity—to the meat of the
lesson, which is rehearsal on the piece they will eventually perform. By relating the text to
that performance piece, the skill of sight-reading is now put into context and students can
see why music literacy is applicable to their rehearsal.
Finally, the lesson is set up as it is because there are options if technology fails.
Hopefully—because the teacher needs to select the online criteria beforehand anyway—the
teacher will know if the plan will need to change before class even starts. So if time allows,
music could be printed off before without the need of the projector. However, if this also
does not work, the lesson could continue on using the randomness of the not value dice
and then the teacher, and maybe even students, could choose the pitches. Individual
students could even compose their own passages for the ensemble to read for some added
creativity. The only downside is that this will take far longer and there would need to either
be less sight-reading or less rehearsal of the concert piece depending on how the lesson is
progressing.