For the blog response, choose one of the example lessons Wiggins' provides in this chapter and analyze it using the following questions:
- What is the musical problem students are asked to solve?
- How does she suggest the teacher connect to the students prior experiences?
- What is the groundwork the teacher does to enable the students to be successful in the lesson?
- How would the classroom teacher assess that students understand the objective of the lesson?
Also, please bring a copy of your class schedule to class. We will be finalizing your elementary placements in class.
13 comments:
On page 135 in the text, Wiggins talked about contour and direction in listening that can be adaptable for both younger and older students. This exercise is designed to challenge the students to analyze melody and mood. One of the musical problems is predicting what the music will sound like based on past experiences. I think this is especially interesting and difficult for the students, but a good activity to expand their knowledge of music. This example suggests that the educator might connect through past experiences by showing the charts. The charts of past analysis might excite the student to try and repeat that kind of analysis. Wiggins also suggests that the groundwork be experience with graphing songs. This suggests that if the student is familiar with the objective and has accomplished it before, they would be able to do it again. Finally, the assessment would involve describing what they hear through movement or drawing along with the charts. Also, they can expand in more detail their understanding of the material by discussing their feelings with the teacher.
I think this is an interesting task for the students. I never thought about having a list of possible problems, so that the educator is not confused if the students don't accomplish the activity. I also think that having an idea of their prior knowledge is a good way to not stretch the students to do something that are incapable of doing. I really liked this chapter.
On page 131 in the text the author uses an exercise to help students use what they know about music to explore the role of duration and pitch in a melody, and they ways players use duration and pitch. In order to connect students to prior experiences the author suggests to show students a notated page of unfamiliar music. They teacher should encourage them to show what they know and do not know about the piece. This activity should help students understand the use of notation. The groundwork the author lays assumes that no prior experience is needed with these kinds of activities. The lesson is designed to provide a basis for future problems. In assessment of this exercise the students will show their comprehension by notating simple, familiar melodies with iconic represenation. The students will also create original melodies and figure out how another students' melody sounds by interpreting those icons.
OOps! Anonymous was Andrea Mitchell....sorry I am a little slow.
Jennifer Boone
From page 128: The musical problems the students are suppose to explore include long/short sounds, skips/steps, and repeated notes within melody lines. The connection to prior experiences includes using icons to represent pitch and duration of songs they know. The groundwork that the teacher needs to lay is a reminder that previous experiences involving icons will be similar to the new one. The suggested assessment includes the students discussing the location and placement of their icons and ability to sing the song accurately.
After reviewing the lesson: "Experiencing Dynamics Part I", I found that the problem the students are faced with is figuring out how a music director in a concert hall can make the sounds of the instruments be like a parade going by in the sense of dynamics. The teacher is connecting to the students' past experiences through their knowledge of what it sounds like to have a parade go by them in terms of the amount and volume of the sound being produced. The teacher starts by asking questions about the concert hall, and explains how to play louder or softer on some instruments. It also helps the students to listen to some music and begin to listen for the dynamics in the music. To assess the students after the lesson, the students will simply describe to the teacher what they have heard in the music through the use of movement, diagrams, and verbally describing it.
The example I chose was on page 138 - using a song to develop a class performance. Students are asked to generate original musical ideas for a class performance of a song by using icon charts. The song will be based on ideas from "The Ghost of John". The book says that the teacher can connect it with previous experience by explaining the the song is a Halloween song, and that the class is going to try to make some Halloween music. By doing this, the students will need to determine what aspects of a scary song make it sound creepy. The teacher is around to help the students, but does not give them all the information necessary for the students to solve the problem. The teacher can assess that the students have understood the objective of the lesson by the way the students arrange the icon charts. They will also show that they understand by singing the song with appropriate feeling, while developing an appropriate introduction and coda to the song.
This entire lesson of contour and direction can be very fun for students if they are familiar with what they are doing and understand what is wanted. The authors suggests showing the students examples which will help them understand how the music relates. I think once the students are familiar with graphing and can show musical knowledge through this excercise the students are ready to demonstrate the excercise on their own.
I chose the assignment "Creating a Melody" that is Figure 6.6 on page 144. The musical problem is once they've worked out how skips and jumps might work on a barred instrument, they would make up their own music that has skips and steps with a partner. This is to help students understand skips, steps and repeated notes while composing. Both for the groundwork and the prior experience this lesson has the student talking about songs they know with skips, steps and repeated notes or teaching them a new song with these characteristics. The assessment is done through discussions, the performance of the song, and their original melodies.
I chose the lesson beginning on p. 127. The musical problem the students are asked to solve is that of deciphering a song simply through it's iconic representation. Some groundwork needed for this is a very basic understand of duration relationships (and later pitch). The teacher could observe students to see if they have a grasp on the concept.
I chose the lesson on p. 131, Entry-Level Exploration of Pitch and Duration for Older Beginners. The musical problem students are asked to solve is to figure out a way to represent, both iconically and symbolically, the pitches and durations of familiar melodies. The way she suggests to connect to students prior experiences is to show the students a page of music and ask what they do already know about the music. The rest of the lesson should be aimed at teaching the students how to understand what they don't already know. The groundwork that enables the students to be successful is that the lesson doesn't require any prevoius musical knowledge or experience, because the lesson is aimed at laying the groundwork for future lessons. The way the classroom teacher would assess the students understanding of the lesson would be to have them notate other familiar melodies using their iconic representation, as well as make a connection to traditional notation. The students could also create their own, original melody or figure out how another students melody sounds by using their own notation symbols.
Richard Barker
I was looking at the lesson on page 156. The problem that is posed to the students is to figure out what the piece "The Hunting of the Snark," is conveying. They are to do this by listening to the piece and theorizing what is happening or what is being represented and then having improvisatory conversations with the teacher. She wants to discuss melodies they have already analyzed and discussed in prior lessons and talk more in depth about how they can be musical questions and answers. The students should be able to able to analyze the musical example then have improvisatory conversations with the teacher and the peers with or without the support of the teacher. After this, students will discuss how melodies can be used as a musical conversation similar to what they would have in a social setting and the characteristics of the melodies that are produced.
i like the lesson on page 135 about exploring contour and direction through listening. i like it because it combines listening with something visual and tangeble that students can see and feel as they follow along. i believe the musical problem that the students are being asked to solve is whether or not they can see and follow the contour and shape of a melodic line. it connects to prior experiences and groundwork by asking the students to watch while they listen. in order to be successful at this lesson, students should be able to see the melody and its shape, which is one step closer to following actual written musical notation. this lesson could be assessed by asking the students to arrange the puzzle cards according to what they hear and then asking them to trace the melodic line they heard with their finger. this would should the teacher if they in fact, could follow the melody and also allows the teacher to follow the student's method of thinking.
amanda writtenhouse
The lesson on pg. 128 on the Identification and Representation of Duration and Pitch is the lesson I chose. The students are presented with the musical problem of figuring out pitch and rhythmic duration based on listening and using icons to represent what they hear. The teacher connects this lesson to the students’ previous knowledge by reminding them of the past lessons working with iconic representation of pitch and rhythm. The teacher will then assess the students’ knowledge of the material by the iconic graph that the students have created, and based on the interaction with the movement to the music.
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