【说课逐字稿】第十七届教师基本功大赛一等奖- A Musical Genius

北师大版必修三 Unit 7 Art Lesson 3 A Musical Genius

陈嘉祺

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, dear judges, my name is Chen Jiaqi. It is my great honor to have this opportunity to stand here and share my teaching design with all of you. Today, my topic is from Unit 7 Art, lesson 3, A Musical Genius. My presentation will unfold from the following six parts.

Now let's start from the very beginning—the Teaching Principles. My teaching principle mainly stems from the English Curriculum Standard released in 2017 and revised in 2020 and it attaches great importance in developing students’ subject core competences. And it advocates teachers to adopt English curriculum content with six components integrated and the Activity-based approach.

It inspires me to promote students learning through a series of integrated, relevant and practical theme-based activities. I believe under the proper designed activities students can make improvements in both of the six components as well as their core competences.

In addition, Bloom’s Taxonomy and the theories of zone of proximal development are also adopted in my teaching lesson.

Here now let's move on to the Text Analysis. It is selected from the required Book 3, published by Beijing Normal University. It was chosen from the Unit 7 Art. According to English Curriculum Standards, you can see we need to focus on or consider our teaching design from the perspective of whole unit design. Lesson three mainly deals with Why of this unit, that is the significance if art.    

We can see that lesson three actually explores some representative works and musicians in the field of arts and students are able to reflect on themselves and learn from their qualities. This lesson is mainly about the music genius Beethoven.

As for the text itself, it is under the context of man and society. It introduces some basic information about Beethoven and composition and the successful performance of Symphony No.9. It is quite suitable for students to gain deeper insight into his path to success and learn from his qualities.    

And it is a narrative writing with clear structure following time order and includes vividly descriptive language to show Beethoven’s emotions.

So here is the whole summary of the whole text.    

And I can say that this text has effectively stated Beethoven’s life experience and has showcased Beethoven’s exceptional talents as well as his accomplishments in music. However, in order to guide my students to focus on his qualities, I think some details to review his struggling process and his work are insufficient. Therefore, I have adopted the multiple tasks of comprehension in this lesson.

So here are the two materials I have selected for lesson. The first is Heiligenstadt Testament by Beethoven which reviews his struggling process and his negative mentality after his deafness. And the second one is chosen from the coursebook published by Yilin press and it is used to scaffold the appreciation of the masterpiece.        

And here now let's move onto the Analysis of My Students. My students are actually very average language level. But they have some vocabulary related to music and grab some basic skills and strategies of reading, such as skimming and scanning. However, they might have difficulty in reading between lines and reading beyond lines. They have little knowledge about how his life experience affected him and they have little knowledge about how to appreciate a masterpiece, especially a musical work. What's more, they lack deep understanding about the qualities that lead to his success. What is worth mentioning here is that our students are very familiar with Beethoven as they have learned about Beethoven ever since they were in primary school. So based on this, it helps the student better understand the text. However, it also poses challenges to us teachers, to keep motivating on students and to set learning objectives.    

Fortunately, under the guidance of these two theories, I have set my Teaching Objectives like this. The teaching objectives are based on students' existing schemas and activities of different levels of cognitive processes. And they mainly deal with the potential difficulties of my students.

Let’s move on to the most important part - Teaching Procedures. Here we can see it is the overall structure of my lesson and 8 activities as well as the assignments are included. And we can see from this chart, students’ previously superficial understanding about Beethoven in this whole text will finally restrengthen or deepen under several activities of different levels. And all of these procedures finally will contribute to a comprehensive and deeper understanding about the genius Beethoven.        

Now let's go into more details. Let's start from Activity 1. Activity 1 is to activate students and get students emotionally and cognitively engaged. To help students better understand Beethoven's difficult situation, I think there's nothing more effective than let my students experience it by themselves. Therefore, I design an activity --- Try to compose. Students are invited to use these five simple notes to create a short piece of music and then they are not allowed to hear any musical sounds. And then their notes will be put into an App. I will transfer this note into some musical sounds. After enjoying their works, I had a short interview with these composers, and they just respond like, “Oh, I didn't expect my words to be like this. I can't imagine those music sounds.” And then I can naturally lead in the topic by saying, “Hundreds of years ago, there was a guy without hearing any musical sounds using these five simple notes created a masterpiece and then let's enjoy it. Well, actually that is symphony No.9. ”    

And then after showing their appreciation about this musical piece, students are required to define what is a genius in their own words by completing this sentence. And these are some of my students answers. A genius is a talented person who are full of imagination and determination, etc.

And then Activity 2 is to summarize some detailed information about Beethoven, students are required to fill in the profile here. And I will also summarize Beethoven's life experience with a curve like this. And then I let the students to focus on his life turning point here. That is his deafness.    

Therefore, Activity 3 and Activity 4 are designed to deal with this problem: How did Beethoven’s deafness affect him from different perspectives? And in activity 3 students are required to read through the rest of the passage and to underline some details that shows the effects of deafness on him.

Now here we've got some details we can know from the text. For example, Beethoven was losing his faith in himself because of the deafness. Beethoven failed to realize the end of the symphony because of his deafness, etc. And then I will put all these details together and ask the student this question: Should these descriptions belong to a musical genius or a genius? Okay, the answer is obvious. No. By doing so I intend to provoke my students’ critical thinking about a genius.     

And then in Activity 4, my students will shift their perspective to the first person's perspective. I present this letter to my student. It is from Beethoven to his brother. And I will ask the student this question --- If you were Beethoven, how would you feel at the time? And the students are required to read this letter out aloud using proper tones showing proper emotions. This activity actually includes their abilities to make inferences. We can find some emotions like this: depressed, ashamed, I would have ended my life hopelessly,something like this. And then I will put these details together.

Again, I asked students this question: Should these descriptions belong to a genius? The answer is hard to know again, right? To continually motivate my students, I continue to ask: what saved his life and what made him a genius? It is merely because of his talents? No, then what is that?

Then activity 4, I motivated my students and guided them answer my question by completing the sentence following the previous sentence here, I would have ended my life. It was only          that held me back. Some students give me some very brilliant answers, just like, it was only my determination that held me back.    

However, in this lesson I really would like to provide my students something different. So I guided my students to refer back to the text and find out the changes in Beethoven's emotions and then it got the flow like this.

And I ask the students: Could you please find the key causes for his changes in emotions? Very easily, student find the words. And then I ask students: could you please complete this sentence again? It was what that held me back? This time students gave me some different answers. They will answer like: it was only my passion for music. It was only my art that held me back. This answers actually are consistent with Beethoven's interpretation. It was only my art that held me back, okay? And then I let the students read the whole paragraph together and to feel Beethoven's great passion for music.    

And now with the art of the symphony being the key word of the lesson, I think it's time for us to do some appreciation. But before the appreciation, I would like to scaffold my students a little bit. So I showed it a second additional material to my students. As the student read through the passage, I will draw the musical flows on the blackboard to help my students to visualize the characteristic of this symphony No.9.

And then to help students connect all these information, I asked the students to make comparison among all the flow chart I have drawn in this lesson, and students can clearly and very quickly get the answer.    

Actually, symphony No.9 is not only a music note representing his talents but also it represents Beethoven's life. Therefore, students start to their second appreciation. And I believe they are able to share something new.

After that, last but not least, it is about to create and share, Activity 8. To synthesize what students have already learned, I created an authentic task inspired by an international musical festival, our school classical music club is going to hold a commemorative concert of Beethoven as well. Please offer theme to the ceremony which will include your understanding of Beethoven.      

Now here comes my Assignments. Two assignments were designed. The first one is, after this lesson, do you still think Beethoven is a genius? Please define what is a genius in your own word? And the second one is to get prepared for the commemorative concert of Beethoven, please create a poster about Beethoven.

As for the blackboard design, it is to visualize the sequential construction of students understanding. So different information will be added to the blackboard throughout each activity. So here is the full version of my blackboard design.    

Lastly, let me wrap up a little bit. You can see from these charts. Different learning objectives are successfully and progressively achieved through several activities of different cognitive levels.    

Here, let’s come to the last part of my presentation. That is the Highlights and Reflection.    

The first one is learning objectives are set scientifically. It is consistent with Bloom’s Taxonomy and they are located in the zone of students’ proximal cognitive development. Secondly, all the learning activities are interrelated with one activity serving as the scaffolding, which is consistent with students cognitive development and helps them better achieve their learning objectives. And thirdly, all the activities of different levels are involved in my lesson. Students are able to explore the thematic meaning from different angles. And six components are successfully integrated. So this is the end of my elaboration. Thank you for your listening!

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