Ian Kenney
Music Educator / Performer
East Stroudsburg North - Lehman Intermediate
Daily Schedule / Lesson Plans / Classwork Examples
Daily Schedule
1st period: 7:46am - 8:28am
7th/8th Grade Choir (2 groups: ODD/EVEN Days)
*Directed by Keith Labar (HS Director), Mrs. Scott accompanies*
2nd Period: 8:30am - 9:12am
6th Grade Choir (2 Groups - Days 2,4 and Days 3,5)
PREP (Days 1, 6)
3rd & 4th Period: 9:12am - 10:45am
High School (9-12 Mixed Choir, 9-12 Girl's Choir)
*Directed by Keith Labar - Mrs. Scott accompanies*
5th Period: 10:45am - 11:22am
LUNCH
6th Period: 11:24am - 12:07pm
7th Grade General Music (2 groups: ODD/EVEN days)
7th Period: 12:09pm - 12:50pm
PREP
8th Period: 12:52pm - 1:36pm
7th Grade General Music (2 groups: ODD/EVEN days)
9th Period: 1:38pm - 2:20pm
PREP
Sample Lesson Plans
Classwork Examples
Funkytown In-Class Cover Assignment
December 3 & 4, 2013
As part of the 1980-1999 sub-unit in my Popular Forms of American Music unit, each 7th grade general music class worked together during class time to cover the first minute of the famous one-hit-wonder Funkytown by Lipps Inc. - incorporating music-making into the classroom, and giving students the opportunity to interact with industry-standard recording technology - including the ever-popular "auto-tune" software, Melodyne. Below are examples from each class, and, when approprite, the "before and after" which shows how auto-tune was used.
The main theme of this activity is to show that technology made editing, tweaking, and perfecting music very easy from the 1980's to the present day. Any audio recording is malleable with the aid of a powerful digital audio workstation. In our case, we used Apple's Logic Pro 9. While none of these covers are totally perfect, the students were exposed to quantization of drum tracks, which is the process of transforming imprecise musical notes (due to expression/human error) to a musical representation that eliminates the imprecision. The students also interacted with detecting errors in MIDI data on a piano roll, and then adjusting the incorrect pitches to their correct places.
Period 8 Even
Original Track Finished Track
(without auto-tune) (with auto-tune)
Period 6 Odd
Original Track Finished Track
(without auto-tune) (with auto-tune)
Period 8 Odd
Original Track Finished Track
(without auto-tune) (with auto-tune)
* Files may take a few moments to load - they are high-quality samples. *
Winter Concert Accompanying
For Lehman Intermediate's 6th Grade Winter Choir Concert, I accompanied the choir on piano (my first ever public performance on piano) for A Distant Shore (arr. Donnelly/Strid). Below, you can listen to the audio from the concert, view the concert program, and also view a video of me playing drum set (also the first time I played that in public) for the choir's performance of Grinch! (A Christmas Choral Medley).
A Distant Shore audio
Inspiration Project & Differentiated Instruction
My 7th grade general music classes, as part of their final project for the Popular American Music of the 20th Century unit, created a graphic organizer for one genre of music and time period. The purpose of the organizer was to have the students draw connections between their "main idea" and the instruments, aesthetic charactersistics of the music, and historical events and influential figures of the genre and time period.
The largest challenge I faced with this project was adapting materials for the many special needs students that I had in my classes. I had to orient them with the Inspiration software, and then provide them with instructional materials that did not confuse them, and were clear enough that they could read the instructions exactly and end up with a successful project.
(Examples of student work pending 12/16/2013)