What is Rhythm?

Rhythm is a pattern using sound or movement. The sound could be anything, feet stomping, fingers snapping, a horn, a drum. Movement could be what is making the sound. The movement could be a dance, a clap, your eyes blinking. Rhythm is something that surrounds us and occurs in even the most meaningless tasks, such as typing.

After watching Miss Taylor's rhythm video, I really liked how short, sweet, and to the point the lesson was. Teachers have a knack for going off on a tangent about something when they start talking. We've all done it before. It's distracting and not conducive to the learning process. She uses a lot of teaching strategies that I have successfully used in the past. Using different strategies within one lesson gets students thinking about the topic in different ways. At the beginning she used "think, pair, share" to engage student's prior knowledge of rhythm. There were opportunities to practice rhythm. Some students only understand a topic when they have had the chance to physically do something. She also "dumbed down" the definition of rhythm, making it a whole lot easier to understand. This made the light bulb go off in my own head when my brain made the connection so I can only imagine the "aha!" moments students would have.

The only thing about the presentation of the lesson I noticed to be an issue is that she didn't make eye contact with the camera. Students may be distracted by the thought of her looking off camera. What is she looking at? Who is over there? Why is she looking away? They may even be distracted enough to watch everything else in the video, looking for a sign of whatever is off camera. The only sure way to grab a student's attention is to look them in the eye, whether it be in person or on camera. If you are focused on them, they will focus on you.