Most people I know, both teachers and non-teachers, musicians and non-musicians, believe that students use a lot of math concepts when making music. In the current environment created by core curriculum state standards, this belief can easily lead to the desire for music teachers to explicitly teach, or at the very least reinforce math concepts … Continue reading How Do Math and Music Mix in a Music Classroom?
General Music
What Are Some Ways To Handle A Small Music Classroom Budget?
I am fortunate to teach in a school district with a strong music program, and supportive administrators at all levels. Even so, when it comes to purchasing materials for my classroom, money is scarce, so I have to make a very few dollars go as far as possible. In truth, I really don’t need a … Continue reading What Are Some Ways To Handle A Small Music Classroom Budget?
What Are The Best Pitch Combinations For Teaching Our Youngest Children Singing?
The popularity and success of the Kodaly approach to teaching music in schools has resulted in a widespread practice of using songs and chants comprised of a minor third when beginning formal music education with young children. There is much to recommend this practice, including the ease with which a small interval can be sung, … Continue reading What Are The Best Pitch Combinations For Teaching Our Youngest Children Singing?
A Realistic Look at the Mozart Effect
Much has been made, and continues to be made, of the benefits of music education beyond developing musical expertise. I have touched on some of these benefits in past posts. While I am as eager as the next music educator to trumpet the virtues of musical training, I have also tried to be objectively cautious … Continue reading A Realistic Look at the Mozart Effect
What Is A Dramaturg and What Does It Have To Do with Music?
I recently became acquainted with the word, “dramaturgy.” The context in which I found the word was an article discussing the teaching of dramatization to music voice students on a path to learning opera singing. The writer argued that by comprehensively studying a whole opera, including musical, historical, compositional, and biographical aspects, and not just … Continue reading What Is A Dramaturg and What Does It Have To Do with Music?
How Can The Future Be The Present? A Strategy for the Music Classroom
Probably everyone knows that the present is not the same as the future. The present can be seen, and is occurring now. The future has not yet occurred, but will occur. You are reading this word now, but will be reading my next sentence in the future. You don’t know what my next sentence will … Continue reading How Can The Future Be The Present? A Strategy for the Music Classroom
What Can L.A. and Math Teachers Learn from Music Teachers About Practice?
It is always good to read that researchers have found ways in which music benefits brain development, spatial reasoning, language acquisition, and other areas of learning. Such studies have often been sited by music education advocates in defense of maintaining or even expanding music programs in schools. Work has also been done on integrating common … Continue reading What Can L.A. and Math Teachers Learn from Music Teachers About Practice?
Connecting–The Contextualization of Music Education
We all have musical interests, knowledge and skills. Some of each we gain from exposure to music, through a process of enculturation in which we learn from experience the structures and expressions of our own culture’s music, and to a lesser extent, of others’ cultures with which we are brought into contact. All of the … Continue reading Connecting–The Contextualization of Music Education
What Does A Classroom Where Everyone Is Teaching and Learning Look Like? (Creating Music Part 2)
Today's post is a continuation of yesterday's article, where I began to describe using the core arts standards for creating to design a classroom environment where ideas and knowledge are shared freely as a key part of a rich educational culture. Once musical ideas have been created and selected, they are evaluated. The student is … Continue reading What Does A Classroom Where Everyone Is Teaching and Learning Look Like? (Creating Music Part 2)
Are Teaching and Learning Really That Different?
Often when reading educational theories, I find the phrase “teaching and learning.” Typing the phrase into a popular search engine yielded 113,000,000 results. In general, understanding is seen as the goal, and teaching is seen as the actions leading to that goal. In their seminal work “Understanding by Design,” Wiggins & McTighe explained a concept … Continue reading Are Teaching and Learning Really That Different?
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