Lesson Plan on Constructing Sentences with Technical Vocabulary
Emily Wilbourne, Queens College, CUNY, Music
Music 121 or 122
Lesson objective(s): Students will practice using technical vocabulary to describe music.
Total estimated time: 45 minutes.
Additional outcome(s): These sentences will seem formulaic at the outset, but ideally they
should help the student to integrate unfamiliar terms into their papers in a comfortable and
natural-sounding way.
Course work or assignment underway: This exercise is intended to be used early in the
semester. No specific piece of work need be underway, however in MUS 121 and 122 students
are required to complete a descriptive assignment; this exercise is a useful preparatory task.
Work and/or reading completed before class: A previous class should have discussed a set of
technical musical terms (for example, tempo, crescendo, dynamics, timbre). Students may have
been required to compile written definitions for these terms and to bring them to class.
Sequence of Classroom Activities:
1. On a handout or on the board, provide an example sentence or two for each of the
vocabulary words. (15 mins). Be sure to differentiate between noun and adjectival
forms of the terms where appropriate.
For example:
“At the end of the first section, the tempo changes dramatically,” or “The shift is
marked by a new tempo.”
“the timbre” vs “timbral shifts”.
2. Play two or three musical examples, one at a time. (20 mins). For each example, have
students
a. identify the three most striking musical features (with reference to their list of
terms).
b. write a sentence describing each of the three features identified above, closely
following one of the model sentences provided on the handout.
NB You will need to chose relatively short musical examples; it will be easier for
students if you pick music that is either very, very familiar (such as Queen,
“Bohemian Rhapsody” [extracts]), or very, very distinctive (such as Gregorian chant).
You will also need to play each example several times—as many, perhaps, as four or
five times.
3. Ask for volunteers to read out the sentence they felt most happy about. Discuss the
relationship between the new sentence and the model sentence.
Ask for other examples that differed more (or less) from the models. (5 mins).
4. Discuss the use-value of model sentences such as these in longer descriptive projects.
(Where this is a preliminary exercise for a piece of descriptive writing, talk about
how these models can serve in the paper they need to write. (5 mins).
Reflection on the lesson’s success or alternative approaches:
It is likely that someone will bring up the issue of plagiarism in regard to this exercise. Ideally
this will provide a really nice opportunity to discuss fair use, common usages and questions of
sentence structure more broadly. Be prepared that this discussion, if it does arise, is likely to add
and extra 10 minutes to your lesson plan.
Lesson Plan on Musical Evidence
Emily Wilbourne, Queens College, CUNY, Music
Music 121 or 122
Lesson objective(s): Students will focus on the scholarly conventions by which musical sound
can be adduced as evidence in an argument.
Total estimated time: 50-55 minutes.
Additional outcome(s): N/A
Course work or assignment underway: A major piece of writing (preferably an
historical/musicological project).
Work and/or reading completed before class: This assignment works best early on in the
writing process.
Sequence of Classroom Activities:
1. Hand out extract from Wendy Heller, Emblems of Eloquence. Students should read the
extract marking up their work to identify (1) musical description, (2) analysis, and (3)
argument. (10 mins).
2. Discuss the reading (as a class). Note the particular details that Heller chooses to focus
on; discuss the details that she doesn’t bother to mention. [It could be useful to play
the extract that she discusses in score; depending on the musical literacy of the group,
it may be necessary to explicate which elements of the graphical representation are at
issue here]. Discuss the way that she links those details to her argument. (10-15 mins,
depending on the literacy of the group).
3. Play a musical example, provide a score. Have students generate a dot point list of four
notable musical details. Play the example at least twice. (5 mins).
4. Posit a possible argument that could be made about the music at hand. Have students
identify which musical details on their list would support that argument. (3 mins).
5. Draft a paragraph that moves from musical detail, through analysis, to argument. (15
mins).
6. Exchange your paragraph with a colleague. Read the draft PAYING ATTENTION TO
THE USE OF MUSICAL DETAIL. Which sections were the most convincing?
Which sections were too vague? Write a brief paragraph for your colleague
explaining your answers. (7 mins).
7. Return to a group discussion, focusing on the way in which these techniques could be
used in their individual papers. (7 mins).
Reflection on the lesson’s success or alternative approaches:
This assignment could also function as a take-home written exercise. This could be done at home
for the first time, or, after having completed this exercise in class, students could be asked to
repeat the process using a piece that is relevant to the argument of their class paper.
Lesson Plan on Musical Auto-Ethnography
Emily Wilbourne, Queens College, CUNY, Music
Music 121 or 122
Lesson objective(s): For students to connect a musical “work” with a rich emotional and
semantic context in their own lives.
Total estimated time: 25-30 mins.
Additional outcome(s): Ideally the act of auto-ethnography will lead to a richer understanding
of the complexities of musical signification. This will have an impact on all future writing for the
class.
Course work or assignment underway: A major piece of writing (any).
Work and/or reading completed before class: This exercise is designed to be undertaken early
in the process.
Sequence of Classroom Activities:
1. Students should take a piece of lined paper and a pencil (or pen). Number the page from
one to ten down the left side. Generate a list of ten pieces of music that were
important to you in high school (or middle school). Do not worry about what the
pieces are, just write down the first ten that you can think of. (3 mins).
2. Choose the piece of music from you list for which you can remember the most vivid
experience. Imagine that you are having that experience again. Describe what you can
see in front of you, describe what is behind you, describe what is to either side of you.
If there are other people there, describe what they are doing and perhaps what they
look like. Do not stop to think too closely about what you are writing. Do not let your
pen stop moving. (7 mins).
3. Describe how you felt at that moment. What relationship did the music have to that
feeling? Did it intensify it? Contradict it? Were the words important? Were you
listening to the music? Were you performing? Was the music playing in the
background? Were other people paying attention to it? (7 mins).
4. How did that event change your relationship to that particular piece of music? To other
music? To other people? (5 mins).
5. Re-read what you have written. How many words did you write in this time (19 minutes
of actual writing)? Pick out the sentence you like the most of what you’ve written and
underline it. (3 mins).
6. Return to the group for a discussion of the exercise. (10 mins). Have students volunteer to
read out their favourite sentences. Discuss the deeper questions about music and
context that the exercise brought to the surface; discuss this process of generating
writing in the context of the larger essay that the students will produce later in the
semester.
Reflection on the lesson’s success or alternative approaches:
This exercise borrows from the generative techniques of Lynda Barry, What It Is (Drawn &
Quarterly, 2008).
Lesson Plan on Intro to Intros
Emily Wilbourne, Queens College, CUNY, Music
Music 121 or 122
Lesson objective(s): Students will focus on the purpose of an introduction.
Total estimated time: 10 or 30 mins (depending on whether students have a draft in hand or not
yet).
Additional outcome(s): N/A
Course work or assignment underway: A major piece of writing (any).
Work and/or reading completed before class: This exercise can be done at the very beginning
of a writing assignment, or after students have a draft in hand.
Sequence of Classroom Activities:
1. Handout three sample introductory paragraphs for a hypothetical paper about Handel’s
comic opera, Partenope. This handout is included on the following page. Have
students take turns in reading sections aloud. (5 mins).
2. Discuss why the third example is so much more effective than the first two. (5 mins).
(Example 1 tries to contextualise the paper within the entire sweep of world history;
this is not necessary. Example 2 launches into some of the background material for
the essay, without clarifying what the point or argument is. Example 3 is relatively
good, if a little overblown.)
Note that I regularly get versions of intro 1 and intro 3, even in final versions of
student papers.
3. If students have already completed a draft of their paper, have them re-read their
introductory paragraph and assign it to one of the three categories presented here. (10
mins).
Have them list any information that is missing from their introduction (this might be
thesis, historical context, etc.).
4. In pairs or groups up to four people, students should discuss their current intro. They will
need to read it aloud for their group and then invite comments on what is
missing/unnecessary.
Reflection on the lesson’s success or alternative approaches:
This exercise can be used in tandem with “deep-end intros”; if so, this should be the first of the
two.Introduction to introductions
WILBOURNE, 2013
Below are three sample introductions to a hypothetical essay on the topic of Handel’s comic opera, Partenope.
EXAMPLE 1:
For as long as humankind has existed, people have used their voices to communicate and to create music.
They have not, however, always done so in the same way. Opera is one of the important ways in which
humans have used their voices to simultaneously tell a story and yet to entertain others with spectacular
musical ability. Invented at the beginning of the seventeenth century as a deliberate attempt to re-create the
aesthetic ideals of ancient Greek drama, opera began as a fairly dry, academic entertainment for Italian courts
and educated men. Over time, this changed, and opera became a popular public entertainment, particularly in
Venice, where Carnevale drew large crowds. Each generation had new ideas and new musical layers to add to
the genre, and eventually opera seria—otherwise known as “serious opera”—developed. Many people loved
to go to the opera and were huge fans.
EXAMPLE 2:
George Frideric Handel was born in 1685, and died in 1759, having amassed a huge fortune and an enviable
reputation as a composer. Handel was a success in a number of musical genres, not least that of oratorio
(which he revolutionized for the tastes of the burgeoning English middle class) and opera. Handel’s particular
musical talents benefited from an international education, which allowed him to synthesize a variety of
musical idioms and national musical languages into his own work. Unlike Johann Sebastian Bach, who was
born the same year, Handel wrote works that were aimed at the masses, not only travelling far from the city
of his birth, but also representing the metaphorical and geographical distances he had come in his
compositional style.
EXAMPLE 3:
George Frideric Handel’s Partenope, first performed in 1730, is an exception in the body of his operatic works.
While most of Handel’s operas conform to the stylistic constraints of opera seria, Partenope takes a comic
subject—as elaborated in a libretto by Silvio Stampiglia—and illustrates a lighter side of Handel’s musical
personality. The switch from one genre to another, however, is not complete, for Partenope borrows many of
the hallmarks of seria performance. In this paper, I will examine the comic elements of Handel’s Partenope,
focusing on the composer’s ability to meld the comic to standard staging devices and musical devices of the
seria tradition. The combination of elements that characterize this opera create a fluid and engaging exemplar
of the operatic tradition, anticipating, in many ways, the shift to a more “naturalistic” operatic style that was
to follow in the work of Handel’s successors.
Lesson Plan on Deep-End Introductions
Emily Wilbourne, Queens College, CUNY, Music
Music 121 or 122
Lesson objective(s): Students will write an introduction in class. Though they may not end up
using this piece of writing in their final paper, it should—at the least—encourage them to think
about the way in which they begin their work.
Total estimated time: An entire class period (1h15mins). It would be possible to divide this
class into two sections; the possible point of division is identified below.
Additional outcome(s): This lesson incorporates a reading-for-structure exercise, which has its
own benefits.
Course work or assignment underway: A major piece of writing (any).
Work and/or reading completed before class: Students should come prepared with an event or
specific happening that typifies the central issue of their paper.
Sequence of Classroom Activities:
1. Handout three sample introductions from scholarly sources, each of which employs an
opening sentence modeled on the formula, “In the year XXXX, this happened . . .”
Include the first three or four paragraphs in your example (ideally enough to get
beyond the descriptive section of the piece).
Students should read the excerpts, marking up which sections are DESCRIPTIVE,
ANALYTIC, or ARGUMENTATIVE. (15 mins).
2. Discuss the patterns that students have noticed. (7 mins).
[If this lesson is to be completed over two separate days, break here. The benefit of
this approach is that it allows students to pick the “event” they wish to use for the
introduction with a clear idea of why and how the event will feature in their work.]
3. Have students draft an introduction for their own paper, using the event they chose in
advance. They should follow the template: (1) description of event, (2) analysis of
broader/deeper issues raised by the event, (3) articulation of how their paper will
address these issues. (30 mins).
4. Students should exchange their drafted introduction with a colleague. Having read the
intro, the student should paraphrase the thesis of the paper and then return the draft
and the thesis statement to the author. (7 mins).
5. Does the thesis statement (as derived by a reader) match the one the author had in mind?
Is this the ideal “moment” to have chosen for the introduction? If not, why not? If so,
why? Students should answer these questions in writing. (7 mins).
6. Return to the group for a discussion of the exercise (10 mins). Note that the questions
they just answered should be enough to generate a group discussion. If not, you may
wish to brainstorm other ways (interesting and/or boring ways) to start a paper.
Reflection on the lesson’s success or alternative approaches:
This exercise can be used in tandem with “Intro to intros”; if so, this should be the second of the
two.
Lesson Plan on Reverse Outlines
Emily Wilbourne, Queens College, CUNY, Music
Music 121 or 122
Lesson objective(s): This exercises is intended to aid in the revision process.
Total estimated time: ca. 45 minutes.
Additional outcome(s): N/A
Course work or assignment underway: A major piece of writing (any).
Work and/or reading completed before class: Completed draft of paper.
Sequence of Classroom Activities:
1. Have students read through their work and construct an outline that accounts for every
paragraph. This should look like an outline, but instead of describing their intentions,
this should accurately represent what they wrote. (20+ mins; the length of this
exercise will depend on the length of the papers written).
2. With the reverse outlines in hand, ask students what they saw as the purpose behind the
exercise. What did they notice about the structure of their papers that they hadn’t
noticed beforehand? (5-10 mins).
3. Working alone or in pairs, students should consider the relative length of the various
components of their paper. How much space is given to the introduction? The
examples? The conclusion? (3 mins; 6 mins if they work in pairs).
4. Looking at the reverse outline of a colleague, does this seem like the most logical way to
lay out the information? Are there any obvious changes that should or could be made
to the structure? Write them a paragraph outlining your thoughts. (10 mins).
5. Return to the larger group. How can this help to identify places for revision? (5 mins).
NB This might be a good place to discuss the purpose of revision: to remove
irrelevant material, to condense lengthy (but still relevant) material, to expand on
missing material, to add supporting material, to shift material around, to improve the
written expression, etc. (Revisions should always have a purpose). [This would
probably extend the time beyond 5 mins to 15 mins].
Reflection on the lesson’s success or alternative approaches:
This exercise works best on the day in which students hand their draft in or on the day in which
the instructor hands their drafts back.
Lesson Plan on Quotation Frames
Emily Wilbourne, Queens College, CUNY, Music
Music 121 or 122
Lesson objective(s):
Total estimated time: 35-40 minutes.
Additional outcome(s): This is a writing exercise, but it is also a reading exercise that should
make students more aware of the way in which authors shape their arguments.
Course work or assignment underway: A major piece of writing (any).
Work and/or reading completed before class: Completed draft of paper.
Sequence of Classroom Activities:
1. Using examples taken (where possible) from that week’s reading, discuss the way in
which subtle cues about a source are given by the author. (5 mins).
2. On an overhead or a handout, provide multiple different versions of the same quotation,
embedded within the same sentence, but using different verbs to introduce the quote.
Provide a list of possible introductory verbs and sentence fragments. (7 mins).
3. Have students examine their own draft and find three places where they introduce a
quote. (3 mins).
4. In each of these three instances, what impression does the quotation frame give? Is this
the ideal way to frame the quote? Assess all three quotation frames; re-write at least
one (do all three if you have time). (10 mins).
5. Once students have a “new” version of their chosen paragraph(s), they should exchange
their work with a colleague. The colleague should read the original version AND the
new version. Note down (in point form) the impressions each one gives. Which
version do you prefer? Return the comments to the author. (7 mins)
6. Return to the group for a discussion of the exercise. How effective were your changes at
clarifying the purpose and meaning of the quotes? (10 mins). Ideally this discussion
will emphasise the extent to which subtle cues help to build an argument and to shape
the readers’ opinion. Such cues can be far more successful than overt statements.
Reflection on the lesson’s success or alternative approaches:
N/A.
Lesson Plan on Sources
Emily Wilbourne, Queens College, CUNY, Music
Music 121 or 122
Lesson objective(s): Students will think about the various types of academic sources within the
context of their own research project.
Total estimated time: 30 minutes.
Additional outcome(s): This can be a useful pre-cursor to an annotated bibliography, or as part
of the preparation for a research project.
Course work or assignment underway: A major piece of writing (any) or an annotated
bibliography.
Work and/or reading completed before class: N/A
Sequence of Classroom Activities:
1. Review Gordon Harvey’s topology of source types (3 mins):
Sources: persons or documents, referred to, summarized, or quoted, that help a writer demonstrate the
truth of his or her argument. They are typically sources of (a) factual information or data, (b) opinions or
interpretation on your topic, (c) comparable versions of the thing you are discussing, or (d) applicable
general concepts. Your sources need to be efficiently integrated and fairly acknowledged by citation.
2. Use Harvey’s categories as a framework to generate possible materials for the project
under way. If students have already prepared a list of sources they should sort them
according to this system.
Students should generate a list of possible material that might exist in each of these
categories that they haven’t yet found. (10 mins of individual work).
3. Return to the group for a discussion of the exercise. (10 mins). With the individual topics
in mind, are there categories that seem difficult to locate material for? Have the class
brainstorm information that might exist out there for students who are stuck.
4. Consider how each student would go about actually tracking down the hypothetical new
sources that have been suggested. What are the search terms that they might need to
put in to the databases? What other approaches might prove fruitful? (7 mins)
Reflection on the lesson’s success or alternative approaches:
Are there other categories that might prove more pertinent?
Lesson Plan on Tightening Sentence Structure
(“Loose Sentences Sink Papers”)
Emily Wilbourne, Queens College, CUNY, Music
Music 121 or 122
Lesson objective(s): Students will learn to identify loose sentences in their own work and to cut
unnecessary words in order to tighten their prose.
Total estimated time: 35-40 minutes.
Additional outcome(s): Ideally the process of cutting words will result in a shorter draft, that
will then enable students to develop the ideas they already have and add in new material before
the final draft of their paper.
Course work or assignment underway: A major piece of writing (any).
Work and/or reading completed before class: Completed draft of paper.
Sequence of Classroom Activities:
1. On an overhead or on the board, work through a sample student paper sentence. (7 mins)
Here is an example:
“Burford’s purpose in writing this article is to, in a sense, reinvent Cook as a pop
album artist.” (18 words)
“Burford’s purpose in writing this article is to, in a sense, reinvent Cook as a pop
album artist.” (15)
“Burford’s purpose in writing this article is to, in a sense, reinvent Cook as a pop
album artist.” (11)
“Burford’s purpose in writing this article is to, in a sense, reinvents Cook as a pop
album artist.” (8) [Note that you could also get rid of the word “album”, however that
might begin to change the argument.]
Discuss how the excisions change the feel of the sentence. Reference the tone (and
the authority given to the writer)
2. Have students select a paragraph or two (ca. 250 words is a good guide) from their draft
and tighten the sentences as much as possible. NOTE that the purpose here is to be
absolutely brutal with words. Perfect the skill of cutting out excess words; leave
finding a healthy balance for later. (15-20 mins)
3. Once students have a “new” version of their chosen paragraph(s), they should exchange
their work with a colleague. The colleague should read the original version AND the
new version. Write a brief statement identifying which of the two versions is more
successful and why. If there is a noticeable shift in argument (not just tone) between
the two versions, point that out, too. (7 mins)
4. Return to the group for a discussion of the exercise. (10 mins). You may wish to take a
show of hands for (1) how many students liked the new version of their own work
better and (2) how many students like the new version of their colleague’s work
better.
Other points you may wish to bring up in the discussion:
a. This process of identifying material that is unnecessary to the sentence can also be
extended to the structure as a whole: are there paragraphs that are unnecessary?
Whole sections of the paper?
b. What about moments in which you wish to appear less authoritative, or in which
you wish to show that there are qualifications to how a statement should be
understood?
Are there ways in which you can do that without “wasting words”? What is the
difference between a vagueness or uncertainty that comes from loose sentences
and an authoritative claim to uncertainty?
Reflection on the lesson’s success or alternative approaches:
Optional variant for students who can’t process the idea that any of their words are superfluous:
have them re-write a key paragraph using sentences of seven words or less; no sentence
fragments are permitted. Again, this is an exercise in brutality (and hopefully one which teaches
them how to construct a direct, declarative statement), not a means to necessarily arrive at the
ideal final product.
Lesson Plan on Orienting
Emily Wilbourne, Queens College, CUNY, Music
Music 121 or 122
Lesson objective(s): Students will revise their drafts with an eye to orienting the reader.
Total estimated time: 40-45 minutes.
Additional outcome(s): N/A
Course work or assignment underway: A major piece of writing (any).
Work and/or reading completed before class: Completed draft of paper.
Sequence of Classroom Activities:
1. Review Gordon Harvey’s definition of “Orienting” (5 mins).
Orienting: bits of information, explanation, and summary that orient the reader who isn’t expert in
the subject, enabling such a reader to follow the argument. The orienting question is, what does my
reader need here? The answer can take many forms: necessary information about the text, author, or
event (e.g. given in your introduction); a summary of a text or passage about to be analyzed; pieces of
information given along the way about passages, people, or events mentioned (including announcing or
“set-up” phrases for quotations and sources). The trick is to orient briefly and gracefully.
2. Working with their own draft or that of a colleague, students should identify one place
where orienting is necessary, and one place where the work of orienting fails to be
“brief” or “graceful.” (7 mins).
They should make a dot point list in answer to Harvey’s central question: What does
the reader need here? (Focus on identifying the minimum amount of extra
information.)
3. Turn to the place where orienting could be managed better and redraft the section. This
may involve cutting large swaths of text (remember that you can store some material
in footnotes, either because you’re not yet convinced that it’s superfluous, or because
it’s interesting but tangential to the argument). It may involve rewording or
restructuring sentences. (10 -15 mins).
4. Once students have a “new” version of their chosen paragraph(s), they should exchange
their work with a colleague. The colleague should read the original version AND the
new version. Write a brief statement identifying which of the two versions is more
successful and why. If there is a noticeable shift in argument (not just tone) between
the two versions, point that out, too. (7 mins)
5. Return to the group for a discussion of the exercise. (10 mins). You may wish to take a
show of hands for (1) how many students liked the new version of their own work
better and (2) how many students like the new version of their colleague’s work
better.
Reflection on the lesson’s success or alternative approaches:
Some authors have trouble working out what is “missing” from their own work; having students
choose the problematic sections from a colleague’s work can therefore work better. It will
probably require that students have read each other’s drafts in advance.
If students complete the written component quickly they can move to drafting the other identified
problem area. At this stage they should not feel concerned about not having the sources to hand,
they can put in blanks or asterisks for cited material that they will complete the references for
later. This is a useful skill for them to develop as it can reduce distractions and interruptions in
the writing process.