This is a lesson plan I wrote up post-concert at my high school band students teaching placement. Rather than let the band do nothing and waste precious rehearsal time, my co-op and I wanted to continue pushing the students to be better musicians. Sight reading is a greatly useful skill in music. Not only is it a required part of district band auditions, it is also incredibly helpful in some gigging settings and improves general music reading skills.

This is a unit plan I wrote up to guide the process of teaching my students in AP Music Theory the concept of secondary dominants. This plan took about a week to get through with them and included shorter activities found in the AP Music Theory textbook as well as explanations from my own experience.

This plan was planned for a 45-minute general music class and is the first of a 3-part activity. This activity develops several basic musical skills such as pitch matching, steady beat, and the ability of a class to sing 2 parts at once, though that comes into play in a later plan. My students really enjoyed having the freedom to make up their own rhythms and act out the onomatopoeias associated with each one.