If you are a pubic school music educator, then you are accustomed to writing and posting instructional objectives for your students. In my district, student learning objectives must be posted on the front board at all times so that anyone observing the class can easily see what you are expecting the students to know and … Continue reading Learning Objectives and Essential Questions
music literacy
What Are Ways Students Can Respond to Music?
With the National Core Arts Standards now in their third year, music educators have grown accustomed to thinking of music education in terms of four artistic processes: creating, performing, responding, and connecting. One could argue that responding and connecting are present in creating and performing, so that responding permeates everything a person does with music. … Continue reading What Are Ways Students Can Respond to Music?
Musical Literacy and Inclusion
On September 15-16, 2017 I attended "Tanglewood Conversation" at Boston University. It was a meeting of music educators from within the Boston University music education community to discuss issues of importance to music education in 2017 and to mark the 50th anniversary of the original Tanglewood Symposium held in 1967. What follows are a few … Continue reading Musical Literacy and Inclusion
Toccata Blocks: A Tool To Help Teach Rhythm
No matter what method you use to teach music, be it Kodaly, Orff, or any other, when it comes to music reading there are certain aspects of our music notational system that are counter-intuitive and confusing to students who are just beginning. One of those difficulties is often the irrelevance of how the notes are … Continue reading Toccata Blocks: A Tool To Help Teach Rhythm
Working from an Objective to a Lesson Plan
Let's say you want your children to pass an object in time to the beat around a circle while chanting a rhyme to that beat with the correct rhythms. There are several competencies enfolded into that one objective. You want your children to be able to pass an object around a circle, you want them … Continue reading Working from an Objective to a Lesson Plan
Demystifying Pre-assessment
Pre-assessment can be a confusing, even upsetting thing for teachers and students. Most of the confusion and upsetting arises from a sense of unfairness; how can students be tested on something we know they don't know? When approached in this manner, pre-assessment stirs up anxiety for teachers and students alike. Considering this, the first step … Continue reading Demystifying Pre-assessment
Why Arts Education is More Important Than Ever
Have you ever stopped to consider the difference between sending or receiving a handwritten letter and an e-mail or text? I hadn't until the other day, when I joined a discussion on whether cursive should be taught in schools, or just allowed to be forgotten and fall into obsolescence. Some argued that the latter had … Continue reading Why Arts Education is More Important Than Ever
In What Ways Can Learning Be Assessed Without Inhibiting Learning?
Today my post is not specifically about music or music education, but about a topic in education in general. The topic is grading; how we grade our students, different kinds of assessment, including assigning grades, and what effect these different kinds of assessment and grading have on student learning. Most teachers are apt to teach … Continue reading In What Ways Can Learning Be Assessed Without Inhibiting Learning?
Using Portfolios to Improve Music Instruction
Portfolios in education are collections of student work and of documents related to those pieces of student work. They make possible the documentation of student activity and learning, the reflecting upon work even days or weeks after it is completed, and the charting of progress over time as work collected at various moments is compared … Continue reading Using Portfolios to Improve Music Instruction
Conversational Solfege and the National Core Arts Standards
Conversational solfege is a curriculum for teaching music literacy developed by Dr. John Feierabend. It is a literature based curriculum that is grounded in Music Learning Theory and the Kodaly philosophy for music education. It is not a method that one uses to the exclusion of all others, but rather an effective way of teaching … Continue reading Conversational Solfege and the National Core Arts Standards
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