One of the more popular composing projects in music classrooms is taking a video clip and assigning the students to compose music to accompany what they see on the screen. Such projects must be preceded by instruction on how to use musical elements and structure to convey, express, and represent emotions, images and even stories. … Continue reading Creating Music and Audiences
music literacy
Rhythmic Structure of Music: It’s More Than Syllable and Counting Systems
I have observed among students and colleagues alike that there is a good deal of confusion when it comes to rhythm in music. Students are frequently confused about what rhythm is, and teachers are often confused about how to teach it. From the teacher's point of view, much of the confusion seems to come from … Continue reading Rhythmic Structure of Music: It’s More Than Syllable and Counting Systems
Developing Goals and Objectives for the Music Curriculum
With this post, I continue my series in music curriculum writing. From the title, you may notice the phrase "goals and objectives" indicating that there is a difference between the two. Goals are open-ended, long-range general statements that provide direction for the entire music education program, PK-12. Goals indicate the broad areas of learning the students … Continue reading Developing Goals and Objectives for the Music Curriculum
Developing A Philosophy Statement for the Music Curriculum Guide
In my post on the steps of developing a curriculum guide, I explained that the second step, after evaluating the current program, is to develop a philosophy statement. This statement includes why music education is important and how music education fits into the overall educational plan. In that post, I promised to explain in more … Continue reading Developing A Philosophy Statement for the Music Curriculum Guide
A Closer Look At The Four Artistic Processes: Connecting
In the conceptual framework for the national core arts standards, the artistic process of connecting is defined as "relating artistic ideas and work with personal meaning and external context." This definition delineates the process of connecting to do entities: one's personal life, and the lives of others. The others may be contemporaries or historical, a … Continue reading A Closer Look At The Four Artistic Processes: Connecting
A Closer Look At The Four Artistic Processes: Responding
This summer, I'm looking for funding to purchase music keyboards for my classroom. Many of my students want to learn how to play piano, but cannot afford or find transportation to a piano teacher. My kids love it when I give them time on the piano, but one piano for classes of twenty or more … Continue reading A Closer Look At The Four Artistic Processes: Responding
A Closer Look At The Four Artistic Processes: Creating
The National Core Arts Standards are written around four artistic processes. For music, these processes are creating, performing, responding, and connecting. How do these four artistic processes translate into what music teachers and students are to do in a classroom? I will take each process and, using the framework (see my post from July 8) … Continue reading A Closer Look At The Four Artistic Processes: Creating
Highlights from the National Arts Standards Framework for Use in Music Curriculum Writing
Any curriculum writing that music educators do going forward need to be grounded in the core arts standards for music. These standards were intentionally written to be highly compatible with the common core standards while maintaining crucial distinctive for arts education. The major emphasis is on the four artistic processes of performing, creating, responding and … Continue reading Highlights from the National Arts Standards Framework for Use in Music Curriculum Writing
Can Encouraging Creativity Include Correcting Errors?
Today, as I attended the fifth biennial Symposium on Music in Schools at Yale University, I became occupied with a question that came to mind as I listened to Sebastian Ruth talk about helping students find their voice through music education. His talk and the discussion that followed included points on developing relationships with students … Continue reading Can Encouraging Creativity Include Correcting Errors?
Student Self-Reflection on Music Compositions
In my previous two posts, I discussed reflective questions for student composers that dealt with the musical work, and with the performance of the musical work. Today I will discuss questions about musical form and about a composer's opinion of his or her own work. The most basic aspect of musical form is the balance … Continue reading Student Self-Reflection on Music Compositions
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