Let’s Talk About Music

Michelle Argueta

OBJECTIVES:

PROCEDURE:

1. The ALT and JTE distribute the worksheets to the class.

2. The ALT asks the students to repeat after her to practice pronunciation.

3. The ALT explains the meaning of each word. The ALT asks the students for examples of certain types of music (rock, classical, etc) and tells the students that some types of music (rap, trance, house) will be explained later with music samples. The JTE uses Japanese to explain only if necessary.

4. The ALT will write on the board and explain how to ask/answer questions using “Do you like (noun)” and “What is your favorite (noun).” In this lesson we will only use nouns.

5. The students get in groups (the number of members depends on class size but try not to have groups larger than 6 members) and choose a group name. The ALT will write on the board the names of the groups. This is to help the JTE and ALT call the attention of different groups.

6. Each group receives a set of “judging cards”. (Each set contains three cards with these phrases written in the front “NOT COOL”, “IT’S O.K.” and “VERY COOL.” Depending on the level of English you may write in the back of the cards the corresponding phrase “We don’t like it”, “We like it a little bit”, “We like it a lot”).

7. The ALT will play one minute of a song representative of a specific genre of music. (I am Latin American so I decided to also bring music in Spanish to show them some different sounds they may otherwise never hear). The students in each group will decide first for themselves and mark in their worksheet if the song is “not cool”, “o.k.”, or “very cool”. Afterwards, the students decide as a group how they will rank the song. The ALT will ask each group, “Do you like this type of music?” and the students in the group will raise a judging card and answer accordingly (for example, they may raise the “It’s o.k.” card and say in unison, “We like it a little bit”).

8. The JTE will keep track of how many groups thought the song was cool or not cool and depending on the majority opinion, the name of the type of music will be written under the heading “Not Cool” “It’s O.K.” or “Very Cool” on the blackboard.

NOTES:

 Before you play the next song, you may want to do a little informal introduction of the genre. For example for romantic music, you may want to say that it is about love or that trance music is danced in clubs in Europe and America and its notorious for having few changes in the beat thus putting the club goers in a ‘trance’.

 After a few songs, encourage the students to not look in the back of the cards to answer the question “Do you like this type of music?”

 You may also want to vary and change the question and ask instead, “Do you like this type of song” or “Do you like hip hop?”

HANDOUTS and WORKSHEETS:

The handouts for this lesson plan are here