Submitted by Michiko Kato Dressen

Objectives:

Content:
Students will:

• identify the musical instruments by listening to the sound of some orchestra or band music.
• identify the music genres, the name of musical instruments, the name of composers and players, and what time frame in the history they were active.
• familiarize themselves with specific historical events by comparing it to that time in the U.S.

Cultural:
Students will:

• develop understanding of how universal music is.
• develop understanding of how culturally unique music can be in the different regions of the world.

Language: Content Obligatory
Students will:

• use expressions in Japanese to ask and answer the questions such as what musical instruments they heard, which instrument they (can) play or they want to play (showing desires).
• use Plain - form of Verbs and Adjectives to express Modifying (nouns with entire) Clause such as "A person who can play Cello skillfully is Joy." "Who is the person that can play Violin?" "A musical instrument which I heard now was an oboe."
• use expressions to describe likes & dislikes and why they think they like or dislike using the form of reasoning with Plain-statement.
• use expressions to show desires to learn musical instruments and why they think they would like to learn using the form of reasoning with Plain-statement.
• use expressions to compare the historical background of the classical music to that time in the U.S. 

Note: Vocabulary words are listed in an attachment (below)

Language: Content Compatible
Students will:

• use proper question formation with proper question pronoun and in the proper tenses.
• demonstrate understanding of questions in the proper sentence structures and tenses to ask historical back ground of the composers.
• use proper post position markers/particles to create complete sentences.
• demonstrate their Japanese oral comprehension by discussing with each other in Japanese what kind of music they usually listen to, which musical instruments they heard, what instrument they can play and want to play by using known and unknown musical vocabulary word as an introduction.

Learning Strategies / Social and Skills Development:
Students will:

• use prior knowledge and listening skills to infer meaning of unknown words.
• demonstrate understanding of note-taking skill when they interview with each other.
• use technology to gain more information, connect with resources and community using the target language.
• work cooperatively in pairs to compare and complete worksheets.

Time Frame:

Two to three 50 minutes classes

Materials Needed:

• Pictures of musical instruments in a band and orchestra
• A handout sheet with a list of music genres, musical instruments, key sentences for students to fill in or match together.  A few blank question columns can be added for students to create extra additional questions.
• CDs of orchestra and band music
• Website that students can visit to explore, research (in Japanese) and actually listen to some sample music.

Description of Assessment (Performance Project):

Introduction:
First, students will discuss in Japanese the different genres of music they frequently listen to and musical instruments surrounding them.  They listen to some classical music pieces the teacher selected because high schools in the U.S. as well as high schools in Japan have their orchestras and bands.  Then, they will discuss in Japanese what musical instruments they heard, whether they play or want to play some instruments, how they felt about them and why they felt like that.

Pre-task:
Introduction to music and musical vocabulary:

1.  Most of the young people like to listen to some type of music and carrying CD music players.  The teacher will brainstorm with the whole class to create a list of questions they could use in the pair activity.  The teacher can add these questions when this activity is going on.    

Note: Vocabulary words, sample sentences and worksheets used in this Lesson are in an attachment. 

2.  Genres & Musical Instruments:  The teacher will choose and introduce one classical music piece (played by a Japanese conductor or a symphony orchestra if possible) as an introduction.  Students will listen to this music sample and identify in Japanese the musical instruments "What musical instrument did you hear in this music?" and "What music genre do you think this music belongs to?", etc.  Flash cards of different genres and instruments can be used when the teacher ask the whole group, " Is this jazz, techno, or classical music?"

3.  The teacher will debrief and introduce some new musical vocabularies right after this activity is completed. 

During-task:

4.  Students will interview and write in Japanese with each other going over the questions they generated during their pre-task asking what type of music they usually listen to, what musical instruments they can play or want to play, who they think this composer is and what happened in the US around that time when he was active.  A handout with a list of music genres, musical instruments, the name of composers and some questions they use for the activities will be provided.  A few blank question columns can be added for students to create later as their extra questions that are usually interesting.

5.  Students will visit some websites to explore and gather the information on music genres, musical instruments, musicians, composers and his/her historical background by comparing it to that time in the U.S in order to describe their music preferences and the reasons of their own and the partner later as their post-task.

6.  Students will discuss whether or not they can play certain musical instrument using two verb forms of capability, "Can you play a musical instrument?" "Yes, I can." or "No, but I can play other instrument."

Note: Vocabulary words, sample sentences and worksheets used in this Lesson are in an attachment

7.  The teacher will ask students who can play a musical instrument using a sentence structure with Plain - form of Verbs and Adjectives to express Modifying (nouns with entire) Clause such as "Who is the person that can play Violin?" "A person who can play Cello skillfully is Joy."

8.  Students will express their desire, "I think I want to play/to learn to play (a musical instrument)."  Later, they describe about their partner with "S/he is thinking/is saying/that s/he wants to learn to play." And "It seems that ---. / I heard that ---."

9.  Students will guess what the title of this sample classical music that the teacher chose, who composed this, which time frame in the history this composer was active and what happened in the U.S. at that time.  They will research on these items visiting some Internet sites.
 
Post-task:
10.  Students as a pair will describe briefly in Japanese their own musical preferences of genre(s), musicians or composers and the reasons why they like/dislike them, what musical instruments they play or they desire to play / to learn to play using their gathered information.  Then they describe their partner's interviewed description of music preferences using varieties of previously and newly learned sentence structures and the vocabulary words.  They will also add their historical background of their favorite musicians or composers by comparing them to the same time in the U.S.

Presenters will also answer the questions in Japanese asked by other students.

11.  The teacher will debrief what the students researched on and explain briefly about the next lesson after this activity is completed.

Assessment:

Formative assessment of this lesson will be done by students themselves and the teacher to assess with a checklist when they present the post-task activity.

The Checklist for Lesson 1 is in the Handouts section below.

 

References and Resources:

Classical Net: Classical music source
http://www.classical.net/music/welcome.html

Musical Instruments of Orchestra
http://www.yamaha.co.jp/edu/student/museum/index.html

Classical Net: Dvorak
http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/dvorak.html

Classical Music Theatre: Antonin Dvorak
http://www.fsinet.or.jp/~mfujimot/music/Dvorak/

Japan Information Network: Music
http://web-jpn.org/webjapan/search/Culture_Music_00.html

Japanese Anime & J-pop Store
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2069.html

Entry Port for Japanese Kids Sites
http://web-jpn.org/kidsweb/index.html

Entry Port for various Kids related Sites
http://kids.yahoo.co.jp/

World Factbook 2002: Japan
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ja.html

 

Attachments:

NOTE: some attachments are in PDF form (get Acrobat Reader)

L1 worksheets (pdf)
L1-2 Vocabulary lists (pdf)
L1 sample sentences (pdf)

Checklist for Lesson 1

A Lesson from the CoBaLTT Project
/cobaltt
Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition
University of Minnesota