El Condor Pasa

Today I worked on teaching students how to ask more thoughtful, probing questions to help discussions be more educational and inspiring.  My learning targets were "I can discuss and sing a song from the Andes Mountains" and "I can talk about how questions can be useful or probing or thoughtful or instead, factual."  I chose to work with a song called "El Condor Pasa" because there are a few different interpretations of this song, and it also has many questions embedded in the song itself.  It is a song about love, and it is compared to a condor flying through the air, and how it comes and goes.

I had the students listen to the song and study the lyrics while they listened.  What is the meaning of the song?  That was the "Do Now" .  Then I talked to them about the learning targets, and reminded them of the questions we asked ourselves and answered for "The Magic Flute".  The students remembered that well, and they talked about the questions they had asked.  I got them to understand that most of these questions were "factual" questions with only ONE answer to them. Who is Pamina for example, or what happens to the queen at the end of the opera?  Do we have another type of question we can ask?   How about a question with more than one answer to it?  We had a few questions that were more factual questions about the song, like where did it come from, and why was it in Spanish, and what were the instruments that were played in it.  The tables turned when a student asked, "What inspired the composer to write the song?"  We kept on with this idea, and it is more of a process than I ever imagined.  There is a lot of Metacognition that is required for this exercise, yet if they begin to understand it better, then I will teach less, and they will learn more.

We sang the song after this, and we discussed the differences between sections A and sections B.  These were interesting questions, because there was room for interpretation, and some opposite ideas.  Some students thought the first section was happier, but some thought the second section was happier.  If you are to look at this song from a completely musical perspective, the second section is in major and higher on the staff, so it sounds happier.  Also, it is questionable as to whether the first section is happier or sadder..the story is about nostalgia, where we feel happy about the past but we also feel sad that we have lost the love we had.  The second section is both happy and sad, because the question is: Will love come again? We don't know.  Just holding opposite ideas in one's head at the same time is a complicated, and perhaps too sophisticated idea for this age group, but if I don't ask for it, I cannot expect to ever find it from these students?



My realization is that the idea of generating questions from students is a metacognitive experience.  It is not something that can be mastered or even attempted in one lesson, and it is something that I am even more intrigued by as I continue this quest for teaching and learning, thinking and singing, reading and dancing, all in one class experience.
El Condor Pasa the ultimate version