The National Core Arts Standards include three anchor standards for responding that lay out the ways a person can respond to music. When our students respond to music in our classrooms or on their own in other settings, they are probably doing so in one of the ways described in these anchor standards. They are … Continue reading Responding To Music: Subjective or Objective?
Music Education
A practical guide to planning, teaching, and assessing music instruction.
Singing and Rapping: Two Vocal Traditions
Every now and again, when I say to a student, "please stop talking and instead sing," I get a reply of "but talking and singing are the same thing." I used to be amazed that anyone would not pick up on the differences between spoken word and sung lyrics. But then I stopped to reflect … Continue reading Singing and Rapping: Two Vocal Traditions
Making Lessons Interesting and Important
Any classroom will run more smoothly and be a place of effective learning when the lessons taught are both interesting and important to students. Lessons that are interesting to students are about things that students can use, want to use, and to which they can make connections with their personal lives, their other classes, their … Continue reading Making Lessons Interesting and Important
Student Engagement in the Music Classroom
Music is one of those areas where people seem to think natural ability has as much to do with success as anything. Whereas we assume that with differentiated instruction all children can learn to read, learn to reason and compute mathematically, and learn to use the scientific method to find and discover knowledge and understanding, … Continue reading Student Engagement in the Music Classroom
Using Student Feedback to Improve Instruction
In order to provide the best possible instruction for our students, we must be informed about what they are experiencing as they go through the learning activities we have planned for them. We must know what difficulties individual students are having, what progress each student is making, and what connections the student is making between … Continue reading Using Student Feedback to Improve Instruction
Teaching Musical Phrases
From a perceptual perspective, phrase may be the most important musical element that a music educator teaches. While pitch and rhythm are perhaps the most foundational, and while there can be no phrases without pitch and rhythm, people perceive and understand music aurally in groups of sounds, not from individual notes. Even in instances where … Continue reading Teaching Musical Phrases
Why Teach Instruments in General Music?
From the outset, I want to assure all of you who are Orff teachers that I am not going to oppose children playing instruments in general music. My students play recorders, barred instruments, and non-pitched instruments, and I understand the value in teaching all of them, In fact, that is what I want to discuss … Continue reading Why Teach Instruments in General Music?
Perceiving Expression in Music
The authors of the National Core Arts Standards placed a high premium on expressive intent. It is included in Creating; plan and make, and present, Performing; interpret, Responding; interpret, and in the overriding artistic process on connecting. As I have written elsewhere, expressive intent is problematic in that the listener rarely knows for sure what … Continue reading Perceiving Expression in Music
Staying In For the Long Haul
Teaching is hard work. I'm not trying to garner sympathy from anyone by writing this, I just know that after 32 years of teaching public school music in Connecticut, USA, it's always a tiring day. But it's more often than not an inspiring and fun day too. I come home often exhausted, but at the … Continue reading Staying In For the Long Haul
Depth of Learning in Music Classes
One of the challenges school music teachers face is the wide range of grades many of us teach. It is not uncommon for public school music teachers in the United States to teach every student in a school that serves children from pre-kindergarten through 8th grade. Many music teachers teach 500-700 students throughout the course … Continue reading Depth of Learning in Music Classes
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