Lesson Plan for Implementing

NETS•S—Template I
(More Directed Learning Activities)
Template with guiding questions
Teacher(s)
Name Patrick Collins

Position Teacher | Music Technology

School/District Lanier High School / Gwinnett County Public Schools

E-mail

Phone

Grade Level(s) 9th-12th

Content Area Music Technology

Time line Two to Three Weeks

Standards (What do you want students to know and be able to do? What knowledge, skills, and strategies do you
expect students to gain? Are there connections to other curriculum areas and subject area benchmarks?) Please
put a summary of the standards you will be addressing rather than abbreviations and numbers that indicate which
standards were addressed.

Content Standards Students will compose and arrange music within specific guidelines.
Students know and use a deliberate design process to generate ideas and create artifacts.
NETS*S Standards: Students select and use digital tools to plan and manage that design process.

Overview (a short summary of the lesson or unit including assignment or expected or possible products)

In this lesson, students will learn the process of songwriting and begin to write their own music, which will be
shared with others outside of the classroom. The teacher will start by introducing the students to the
songwriting process, including showing YouTube videos where popular artists (such as Ed Sheeran) talk
through their process. After this introduction, the students will learn about the common structures in, particularly
focusing on modern popular music. Students will then work in pairs and use a provided Google Sheets
template (Appendix A) to begin organizing their thoughts and develop a structure for their song. Using this
template, students will plan how long the song is, how many sections are in the song, how long those sections
are, what instruments will be in the song, and when those instruments will play. Once students have a general
idea of what they would like to do, they will do one of two things: 1) Those that are comfortable being creative
and developing their own musical ideas will begin to use Soundtrap to start composing their original song; or 2)
Those that are not as comfortable being creative will explore Noteflight to find a work to arrange that is in the
public domain and then export it from Noteflight to Soundtrap to begin fleshing it out. During the process of
composing their song on Soundtrap, students will work closely with their partner and their other peers in the
class to receive constant feedback throughout the creative process. In addition to student-initiated
conversations, the teacher will also facilitate discussions by circulating the room and checking in with each
group, listening to their ideas, and then posing open-ended questions for those students to push their creativity.
By the end of the project, students will have composed a song that is least a two-minute long and includes at
least one instrument for each element of music (rhythm, harmony, and melody). The students will then select a
platform (such as Soundcloud or YouTube) to publish their song to so that they can share it with the class and
others. The project will end with a listening project where each work will be premiered and receive feedback.

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Essential Questions (What essential question or learning are you addressing? What would students care or
want to know about the topic? What are some questions to get students thinking about the topic or generate
interest about the topic? Additionally, what questions can you ask students to help them focus on important
aspects of the topic? (Guiding questions) What background or prior knowledge will you expect students to bring
to this topic and build on?) Remember, essential questions are meant to guide the lesson by provoking inquiry.
They should not be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” and should have many acceptable answers.

1. How do people write original music?

2. How do songwriters create and develop their musical ideas?
3. What makes a song enjoyable, catchy, and something that people want to listen to?
4. How can I write my own music and share it with the world?

Assessment (What will students do or produce to illustrate their learning? What can students do to generate new
knowledge? How will you assess how students are progressing (formative assessment)? How will you assess
what they produce or do? How will you differentiate products?) You must attach copies of your assessment and/or
rubrics. Include these in your presentation as well.

Summative: The students will write and publish an original song, or an original arrangement of a song in the
public domain, that is at least two minutes long and has at least one instrument for each of the three elements
of music (rhythm, harmony, and melody). This will be graded based on a rubric (Appendix B).
Formative: The students will complete and submit their Google Sheet planning document (Appendix A) for
review. They will also complete a Google Form (Appendix C) to review one of their peer’s songs. The teacher
will also circulate the room while students are working and check-in with them to ensure progress and quality.

Resources (How does technology support student learning? What digital tools, and resources—online student
tools, research sites, student handouts, tools, tutorials, templates, assessment rubrics, etc—help elucidate or
explain the content or allow students to interact with the content? What previous technology skills should students
have to complete this project?)

To complete the assignment, students will work with a pre-made template on Google Sheets to plan their song,
Noteflight to find songs in the public domain to arrange, Soundtrap to compose their song, and a music
publishing platform (such as Soundcloud) to publish their song. Students will also have access to Ableton’s
Learning Music and Making Music interactive lessons, which are both on the Ableton website. Students will
need prior knowledge of Soundtrap so that they can use it creatively. While they are creating their music, they
will also have access to video tutorials on how to do various tasks on Soundtrap.

Instructional Plan
Preparation (What student needs, interests, and prior learning provide a foundation for this lesson? How can
you find out if students have this foundation? What difficulties might students have?)

The teacher, and students, need to know what genre(s) of music the students typically listening to. Students
will be much more interested in writing music in a style that they like, and their musical ideas will align better
with this style of music. Teachers can discover this by asking students what they are listening to throughout the
year, or before the lesson. Additionally, students need to have a basic understanding of the three elements of
music and how they interact. This will ensure that they are successful while writing their music. Students will
have covered this before, but some students may still be working on mastering this skill at this point.

Management Describe the classroom management strategies will you use to manage your students and the use
of digital tools and resources. How and where will your students work? (Small groups, whole group, individuals,
classroom, lab, etc.) What strategies will you use to achieve equitable access to the Internet while completing this
lesson? Describe what technical issues might arise during the Internet lesson and explain how you will resolve or
trouble-shoot them? Please note: Trouble-shooting should occur prior to implementing the lesson as well as
throughout the process. Be sure to indicate how you prepared for problems and work through the issues that
occurred as you implemented and even after the lesson was completed.

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 Students will work together in pairs in our music technology lab. While they are working in pairs, they are not
limited to working exclusively with their partner; they can talk to and assist other students as well. To ensure
digital equity, our lab gives every student a workstation with the exact same equipment. Additionally, all of the
software is cloud-based, so the students can continue working on any device. Common technical issues might
include students not being able to log into the platforms, forgetting their password, or not being able to get the
equipment to connect to the software. Having a screencast that walks through resolving these common issues
could help students. Additionally, students could have internet connection issues, which could be resolved by
checking the ethernet and Wi-Fi connections. More complicated issues, such as the system time not being
aligned with the district time causing network account connectivity issues, could be solved by contacting school
technology specialist.

Instructional Strategies and Learning Activities – Describe the research-based instructional strategies you will
use with this lesson. How will your learning environment support these activities? What is your role? What are the
students' roles in the lesson? How can you ensure higher order thinking at the analysis, evaluation, or
creativity levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy? How can the technology support your teaching? What authentic,
relevant, and meaningful learning activities and tasks will your students complete? How will they build knowledge
and skills? How will students use digital tools and resources to communicate and collaborate with each other
and others? How will you facilitate the collaboration?

For the assignment, students are given an authentic task of writing original music that will be released as part
of an album. To do this, they will use a variety of technology tools to play, create, and publish their music.
Additionally, technology will be used to deliver content as well. Since students will be composing music, which
can take a long time due to the creative process, instruction will be delivered mostly through the flipped-
classroom setting. This will allow the students to reference back to content as they need it while working
through their project. The flipped model works in our lab because each student has their own computer. With
this set-up, the teacher serves as more of a facilitator to assist students as needed, while the students are the
creators and controlling their own learning. Throughout this activity, the students are synthesizing everything
they have learned about music technology software and music composition to write a complete piece of music.
In addition to creating their music, they will also need to constantly evaluate their music, as well as their peers’,
to provide adequate feedback for alterations. Since the tools (Google Sheets, Noteflight, Soundtrap, and
Soundcloud) are all cloud-based, students can work synchronously on different devices. These tools also have
some form of communication tool, be it live chat or comments, which will allow students to communicate and
make notes directly into the program. The teacher will help facilitate collaboration by checking in with each
group to ask what each member has contributed. The teachers will also encourage the students to use the
communication features within the tool to document their contributions as well.

Differentiation (How will you differentiate content and process to accommodate various learning styles and
abilities? How will you help students learn independently and with others? How will you provide extensions and
opportunities for enrichment? What assistive technologies will you need to provide?)

Since the format of the lesson is flipped, the majority of the content will be delivered via video. Beyond making
logistical sense, this will provide visual and auditory content delivery for those students with those learning
modalities. To ensure that this format doesn’t hinder those students with auditory or language processing
disabilities, each video will include captions and a transcript so the students can work through it even slower if
needed. For students that are more hands-on learners, the Ableton “Learn Music” website provides a series of
interactive tools that assist with teaching musical concepts. Beyond these accommodations, there is some
assistive technology that might be necessary. To ensure that all students can access the information on the
screen (both content and tools), it may be necessary to provide them with a screen reader. This will provide
them with content, as well as help them navigate the interactive elements within the tools. To also ensure that
all students can effectively use the tools, especially the music tools, it may be necessary to provide adaptive
keyboards. These could be as simple as a keyboard overlay that identifies notes and common functions, such
as ⌘+C for copying content. It could also be more complex assistive keyboards (or keyboard functions) that
allow students to play multiple notes (a chord) at once by only having to press a single key. To encourage
students to work both independently and together, the teacher will help facilitate discussions among groups to
receive and provide advice, which is authentic to the music industry. Through additional flipped-content videos
exploring various extended tools and techniques with the music software, as well as more advanced music
theory, students will be able to add greater depth and detail to the project.

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Reflection (Will there be a closing event? Will students be asked to reflect upon their work? Will students be
asked to provide feedback on the assignment itself? Also answer the following questions?

• How will you know if the students found the lesson meaningful and worth completing?
• In what ways do you think this lesson will be effective? Why do you think this?
• What problems do you anticipate and why?
• How would you design and/or teach this lesson differently if you had more time?)

When all students have completed their songs, the class will host a song release and listening party. When
listening to other students’ works, they will provide feedback on what they enjoyed and something they thought
could be improved (Appendix D). When listening to their own work, they will reflect on what they liked, what
they wish they would have done differently, and what they know now that they wished they would have known
at the start (Appendix E). Additionally, all students will be asked about the experience overall and what
changes they would make in the future. I think that this lesson will be effective because it allows the students
the freedom to be creative in a safe environment with a lot of help. Not only do they have a partner, so they
aren’t alone, but cross-collaboration with other groups is encouraged as well. I will know that students found the
work meaningful by their commitment to this collaboration. The more organic the process is to them, the more
successful and engaging it will be and that will come across through their effort and demeanor. Some issues
that I see arising is that many students will probably be apprehensive at the start. When students have to be
creative, they become very self-conscious of their ideas and tend to have trouble starting or committing to an
idea. Additionally, for similar reasons, students have trouble finishing creative projects. With more time, I think it
would be valuable if the teacher could sit down with each group and thoroughly through each stage of the song
writing process, like a collaborator. I think this would solve both the starting and finishing issues, and provide a
great way to encourage creative thinking.

Closure: Anything else you would like to reflect upon regarding lessons learned and/or your experience with
implementing this lesson. What advice would you give others if they were to implement the lesson? Please
provide a quality reflection on your experience with this lesson and its implementation.
For teachers implementing this lesson, it is important to keep in mind that this is a creative assignment. No two
people approach creativity in the same way or on the same timeline. You want to ensure that students have
ample amounts of time to work, and you want to facilitate and ensure they are on task; however, you do not
want to micromanage and be a nuisance to them; they need room to breathe and be creative. Some days, they
may make no visible progress, but they might have tried a multitude of different ideas to find what they like; ask
them what all they tried rather than asking what they have done (wording means everything to fostering versus
demanding creativity). It is also important to emphasize that both students in the group should have an equal
voice. Many times, a confident and unconfident student will pair together and they confident student will end up
doing all of the work because the unconfident student is too afraid of having a “bad” idea. Giving particular
guidance to these groups to build confidence can help both students learn to collaborate.

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 Appendix A

Google Sheets Planning Template

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 Appendix B

Original Song Rubric

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 Appendix C

Peer Review Survey

1. Who is completing the review?

2. Whose project are you reviewing?
3. Can you identify the song structure? What is it?
a. If not, let them know and ask them to talk to you through the song structure.
4. Can you identify the rhythmic instrument track(s)? Which is it?
a. If not, let them know and ask them to identify it for you.
5. Can you identify the harmonic instrument track(s)? Which is it?
a. If not, let them know and ask them to identify it for you.
6. Can you identify the melodic instrument track(s)? Which is it?
a. If not, let them know and ask them to identify it for you.
7. Can you identify the rhythmic instrument track? Which is it?
a. If not, let them know and ask them to identify it for you.
8. Do all of the elements of music complement each other? Why or why not?
9. Is their song at least two (2) minutes long? How long is it?
10. Does the song tell a complete story and feel complete? Why or why not?
11. Overall, what is at least one (1) thing in their project that you think works really well in their project? Why?
12. Overall, what is at least one (1) thing in their project that you think could be improved? Why and How?

Appendix D

Peer Feedback Survey

1. Who is completing this peer feedback?

2. Whose project are you listening to?
3. What was at least one (1) of the best moments in the song? Why?
4. What was at least one (1) moment in the song that could be improved? Why and How?

Appendix E

Reflection Survey

1. When did you finally get an idea of what you wanted to write?
2. What sparked that idea?
3. How often did you run into writer’s block?
4. How did you cope with this and get through it?
5. Which moment in your piece are the proudest of? Why?
6. Which moment in your piece do you wish you would have done differently? Why and How?
7. What is something that you know now that you wish you would have known at the start of the project?
8. What were your thoughts on this project?
9. Did you feel that you had the resources needed to feel successful?
10. If you could change something, what would you change and why?

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