Special Students
For the student that is either physically or emotionally challenged, see the Special Students section of ‘strategies, goals and objectives.’
1. Lesson one:
This section taken from “Seeing Voices” by Oliver Sacks talks about how both “normal and impaired” human beings perceive the art of reading and hearing. Both skills are used in the development of academic skills. Pass out the following readings:
Filming Literature, by Neil Sinyard Page , 100
“The best way to “Know” a thing, is in the context of another discipline “—The Unanswered Question by Leonard Berstein, Page 3.
“Seeing Voices” By Oliver Sacks “The congenitally deaf, it should be added, may have the richest appreciation of (say) written English, of Shakespeare, ever though it does not “speak” to them in a auditory way. It speaks to them, one must suppose—in an entirely visual way-they do not hear, they see, the “voice” ofthe words.”
This is the stereotvical view, and it is not altogether true. The congenitally deaf do not experience or complain of ‘Silence’ (any more that the blind experience or complain of ‘darkness). These are our projections, or metaphors, for their state, Moreover, those with the profoundest deafness may hear noise of various sorts and may be highly sensitive to vibration of all kinds.
This sensitivity to vibration can become a sort of accessory sense: thus Lucy K., although profoundly deaf, can immediately judge a chord as a “fifth” by placing a hand on the piano and can interpret voices on highly amplified telephones; in both cases what she seems to perceive are vibrations, not sounds. The development of vibration-perception as an accessory sense has some analogies to the development of ‘facial vision’ (which uses theface to receive a sort of sonar information) in the blind.
Hearing people tend to perceive vibrations or sound.-thus a very low C (below the bottom of the piano scale) might be heard as a low C or a toneless fluttering ofsixeen vibrations per second. An octave below this, we would hear only fluttering; an octave above this (thirty-two vibrations a second) we would hear a low tone with no fluttering.
The first class might have students identify or listen to “low’ vibration to understand how a deaf person might feel sound without hearing them. Then the next session would have students listening to very low pitch as outlined above.
For the gifted or talented student, use the outline for high school students in the lesson plan section. The teacher might want to have a questionaire outlined as follows:
The Future
In response to the question of what might improve learning conditions in the classroom and how we as students can make an assessment of the possible future needs and interests of students in the 21 st century I have outlined the following:
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1. What might change in the world of students which might affect the way in which they learn? (interactive technology, computers).
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2. What traditional skills might be enhanced though the creative use of technology?
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3. What skills and important areas are we not addressing with students, ie creativity, or special needs created due to unforeseen social circumstances, and how to increase independent thought or how does one encourage students to take ownership of academic skills.
Making Academic Skills Your Own Through the Exploration of Music.
READING LIST:
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“VISUAL THINKING” by Rudolf Amheim
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“UNDERSTANDING MUSIC WITH AI / PERSPECTRVES ON MUSIC COGNITION” by Mira Balaban, Kemal Ebcioglu and Otto Laske
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“LEARNING SCIENCE THROUGH SCIENCE FICTION FILMS” by Leroy W. Dubeck, Suzanne E. Moshier and Judith E. Boss
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“UNDERSTANDING MUSIC” by Janet Moore
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‘FILMING LITERATURE” by Neil Sinyard
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“TEACHNG THE MEDIA” by Len Masterman
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“CREATIVE DRAMA IN THE CLASS ROOM” by Nellie McCaslin