This week, I continued to expand and refine my lesson plan for the Optron Mini. This included: explaining music terminology, additional questions, additional activities, additional steps, and general polish.
In terms of music terminology, I wanted to lay out a basic understanding about vocabulary words that would be used in the Max 8 software. I provided brief descriptions for scales, octaves, and tonics. I also needed to explain how to interpret the sheet music for the last song, as this lesson would likely be taught to students who do not have prior sheet music reading experience. I provided explanations for the different symbols present in the sheet music.
The activities that I added were playing around with scales and tonics, and making your own song. for the first one, I wanted students to become comfortable with the settings they were changing, so they knew what it was without being confused. For the second part, I thought it would give students the most space to get creative after getting through the rest of the lesson.
I added some extra questions at the end about how the changes in key affected what you could play, as well as how it makes you feel. I thought these questions would be good for retention as it would make the students think about what they had been experiencing in the lesson so far.
For the expansion of the activity, I provided more instructions to better prepare students for the following steps. I also polished up the document in various regions to make it all a little more understandable. I will attach this new version of the lesson plan below.
