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
Music Education
A practical guide to planning, teaching, and assessing music instruction.
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
Keys to Successful Practice
In another post, I discussed why many students don't like to practice. There is an irony at work. A player who is struggling needs to practice more than one who is flourishing, yet it is the one who is struggling who is likely to hate practicing and resist practicing because it is unpleasant to play … Continue reading Keys to Successful Practice
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
More On Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy
In order to work effectively with Bloom's Revised Taxonomy, we must understand two dimensions of learning: cognitive process, and knowledge. Cognitive process describes what thought task a learner is performing on a given text or focus. These include, in order of complexity from simple to complex, remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Of these, … Continue reading More On Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy
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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