Eight Principles of Literacy Instruction

Review the eight principles of literacy instruction and analyze the lesson plan you created for the activity presentation. Which principles apply to your lesson? Explicate your rationale by illustrating the principles that relate to key aspect(s) of your lesson.

1. Focus on complex, meaningful questions and problems so that students' reading and writing can be in service of genuine inquiry.
2. Embed basic skills instruction in the context of more global tasks, such as reading comprehension and composing skills in introductory reading and writing activities or instruction.
4. Model powerful thinking strategies for students .
5. Encourage students to use multiple approaches to academic tasks and have students describe their answers aloud to the class so that all students hear different ways to solve the same problem.
7. Make dialogue with students the central medium for teaching and learning.

I feel these principals apply to my lesson because these principals require students to analyze and describe the music they are listening to. Even thought they are listening to music actively they still have to think critically. That will help students come up with ideas about what the music means.

Create a list of all the resources you can find related to one particular concept you might teach. Be sure to search especially for materials that represent a diverse range of cultures, ethnicities and genders.

A concept that I plan on teaching is African American Spirituals. Here are some websites that apply to the subject:

http://www.sbgmusic.com/html/teacher/reference/styles/spirituals.html

http://arts.ucsc.edu/GDEAD/AGDL/rag.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2944.html

http://www.negrospirituals.com/news-song/swing_low_sweet_chariot_swing_lo.htm

http://www.negrospirituals.com/news-song/swing_low_sweet_chariot_swing_lo.htm

Instructional Strategies

List the instructional strategies that you intend to implement in your final unit plan of five sequential lessons.

For my unit plan I intend to implement a hand full of instructional strategies. To begin I plan on using the text walk, to help the students understand what they are reading. I also plan on using interacting discussion. For guidance I will utilize journals, writing, and connective questions for my students. For independence I will use interactive discussion, and reflective writing/singing.

Critical Reading vs. Critical Literacy

How do the two concepts, critical readings vs. critical literacy, relate to your own content area? How might teachers in your content area incorporate the two concepts? Does it make sense to do so? Why or why not?


After thinking about this question for some time now I feel this is particularly harder for a music education major. I feel critical reading is much harder for a music major verse a history major. Critical reading may play some role by saying students read critical by reading there music but that is also hard to prove they are reading critically. The only real good example is if you are in a music history class where there is a text book. I feel music history also applies to critical literacy where the students would have to take the text understand the text and comprehend the text.

Who was Benjamin Bloom?

Benjamin Bloom was an educational psychologist, who created Bloom's Taxonomy which is a categorized level of abstraction of questions that frequently take place in educational settings. It also became a taxonomy that included three domains; cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. The following are the six levels of thinking: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. I strongly think that his research made a major contribution to literacy instruction and practice. I believe a teacher can utilize these categories by testing their student’s analytical ability. As a music educator I feel like I can have students evaluate each other’s playing. Even if you have two groups and have each group evaluate each other. By doing this students can listen and give musical suggestions using musical language. Students will be able to use active listening and listen for very small a thing which is very hard to do and listen for. I feel if students can pick out one thing or give a suggestion to another student Overall, I feel we should use Bloom’s taxonomy for ideas on how to push students to a higher thinking level.

Resonse to Henry Giroux's Question

How do questions of audience, voice, power, and evaluation actively work to construct particular relations between teachers and students, institutions and society, and classrooms and communities? (Are there power relations inherent in the content being taught? Are there power relations inherent in the ways in which content is being taught?)

After thinking about this question for a while, I feel this is a wonderful question to ask future teachers, because I feel a lot of teachers who are teaching today fail at this question. I believe relationships between teacher and student is a very critical and vital part in today’s school system. I think it is very significant to construct a relationship because our class period (for music educators is usually conducting the band) consists of sometimes over 50 plus students. In a band the director needs to hear the band, comment to the band and let the students know what needs to be worked on, which is usually their homework for the night. I feel a band director must essentially be similar to that of a dictatorship more than that of a democracy because we do have more then 50 student’s. I feel like growing up students sometimes gave more respect to a history teacher then to a band teacher. Students must realize that even though they don’t have written homework they have to practice and the band director is their for a reason, and music can play a very important part in students life. It is even proven students who play an instrument score higher on their SAT’s. I understand students will always have something to say or something they want to offer which I think the teacher should unquestionably take seriously. If a students came to me and really wanted to play a piece that they love of course I would take that into consideration and listen to the student. I have been teaching private flute lessons for the past seven years and I learn something new every time I teach a new lesson. In some school districts music educators get to see their students in band and also in lessons which are broken down to 6-12 students per lesson. I feel like as an educator that is a wonderful way to hear the voice of the student, to help the student if they feel behind, or just not so confident with their instrument that they play. I would never want a student not to continue to play in the school band because they feel like they are behind on their instrument and I am not helping them. Overall I feel the answer to this is a little different for the music educators but I think it is a relatively easy question that a lot of teachers today fail at.

Alternative Assessment to Pop Quiz

What I would do instead of a pop quiz is, I would start the class off with a few questions that they would only be able to answer if they had read and done their homework. I would do this on a regular basis and call on different kids each time. Another method I would use is I would hand out a small worksheet that requires them to fill in the blanks as a way of seeing if they did it.