Woody Guthrie

The other day I had the opportunity to teach a mock lesson on Woody Guthrie to my graduate class. My classmates pretended to be eighth graders for this lesson. They make excellent eighth graders.

Honestly, I had not heard of Woody Guthrie until I received my assignment for this lesson. However, as I began researching Woody and his songs I realized that I had grown up singing many of his songs in school, including "This Land is Your Land." While reading about his life I discovered that the strongest influence on his music was his life and travels. This influence was very clear in "This Land is Your Land," so I chose to use this song as an example of his style and background. Once students understood Guthrie's background and how it influenced his compositions I introduced the students to a project we would be working on in school . I had the students brainstorm aspects of their lives that they could write a song about (this would have continued the next time we had class, if I were teaching a real class). The students came up with very creative ideas.

For the most part, I was pleased with the way the lesson went overall. I started the class with the students standing up and singing. This got the students engaged and gave them the opportunity to be actively involved in Guthrie's music. I felt the students needed to be told information about Guthrie to understand how his background influenced his music, however, I kept the information about Guthrie limited to only what they need to know for this lesson. By doing this, I was able to spend most of the lesson doing activities such as singing, writing, and listening instead of lecturing.  To keep the students engaged in the "lecture" portion of the lesson I asked them questions throughout. Most of the questions I asked them were very basic, I learned that I can ask students more thought provoking questions. I had also intended to have some of Guthrie's music playing in the background, but I forgot to turn it on.

I could have planned an activity that would have been able to fit entirely in the 10 minute lesson. For example, instead of having the students write their own songs I could have had them write another verse to the song. This would reinforce Guthrie's particular style as well as the form of the song. This could also lead to students writing their own songs later in class.