My journey this year was to alter my summative and formative assessments. I have leveled my summative assessments for all my classes and incorporated many primary sources to challenge students in their thinking. But as I challenge them more in their thinking, I also want to give them choices when answering certain questions. While I have included more formal and informal assessments in my teaching I have realized that I may need to restructure what I'm really asking students to do and give them the appropriate feedback that will help them succeed.
Monday, May 23, 2022
Monday, May 16, 2022
Tuesday, May 3, 2022
Monday, May 2, 2022
Formative Assessment
One key piece that I will continue to work on and refine is being even more consistent with making sure that my formative assessments and feedback are timely and done often enough. Once in awhile, I struggle a little bit with the timing of some standards. For instance, the balance between making sure content is being covered thoroughly enough without overwhelming students. One of the hallmark things that is on all of the social contracts in my room is being understanding of time, so I try to balance giving students a break to either get caught up or not be overwhelmed with making sure we continue making forward progress while also allowing enough time for feedback.
Social Emotional Learning in the Music Classroom
Getting Started
My ICDP focus this year is on SEL in the music classroom. Music programs naturally embed several aspects of the social/emotion end of education, however, the effects of Covid have really hurt students' desire to participate in band/choir due to various fears. Due to these concerns, our retention and recruitment has been negatively affected and we are trying to recoup our ensembles. Data will be taken from the Conditions of Learning survey, recent ensemble numbers, and qualitative feedback from students. Adjustments will be made to my teaching by additional research and experience implementing SEL lessons.
Resources
One of the best resources I received from the Iowa Arts Summit last summer. This gives examples and language in directly connecting the SEL standards to the national music standards.
Social Emotional Learning and Music Education: Now More Than Ever
This is an article by the leading researcher of SEL and music, Scott N. Edgar, giving examples of things music educators can do in their classrooms to further reach students in their social emotional learning. He explains the connection between the musical arts and the variety of ways we implement SEL on a daily basis.
Fostering Social Emotional Learning In and Through the Arts
Some good ideas, but the best part is the resource list at the bottom which includes a shared Google Drive with even more resources.
Teaching Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Through Music
This resource center includes a wide variety of videos from music educators with ideas of how to intentionally implement SEL into the music classroom at any level.
Music Education and Social Emotional Learning: The Heart of Teaching Music (student workbook) by Scott Edgar (GIA Publications)
Reproducible pages and ideas for use in music classrooms. It is split into the goal groups of SELF, OTHERS, and DECISIONS with teacher resources (including goal, learning standard, student skill set) and student worksheets.
This is truly just a work in progress as I keep finding new resources. I have been implementing a variety of voice and choice ideas within my ensembles while trying to gather informal feedback along the way. I have found that some ideas work better with 7th graders than they do with 5th graders and vice versa. I appreciate how students are willing to give feedback on which activities they enjoy and which we need to send back to the drawing board.
It has been rather validating to discover in some of the research several ideas I have been doing already as prime examples of connecting with students. It can feel overwhelming though with the amount of information and potential ideas/examples. I need to continue in small steps with the idea of a little at a time makes a difference.
Research Findings
In attending the Iowa Fine Arts Summit last summer, I gained several resources and examples of lessons or units I could potentially use in my classroom. One that I found very intriguing and tweaked to fit my students is a unit called What’s in a Name? For our winter performance set of music, I copied a song for the 7th grade band without the title or the composer at the top. The students had a packet to be completed along the way while we sightread and started learning the song. Several times the students were asked what title they would give the piece of music. After working on the song for several rehearsals, we had a ‘big reveal’ day. I asked students what titles they came up with, why they chose those titles, and general thoughts/feelings regarding the piece in general. I also had them look at photos of composers to other songs we had played in the past along with the composer for this tune and try to guess which person it was before revealing the actual song title. It was very interesting hearing student song titles and getting overall feedback on how we approached this unit. I will be doing something similar in the future with a few changes to the overall layout.
One thing I was more purposeful in doing in general this year with all of my groups was asking for more student input. This ranged from feedback on song choices to students ranking percussion assignment preferences to voting on which songs to perform for a concert. I also played a few songs for students as potential ones to pass out and learn and received great feedback on what to proceed with versus what they were not as interested in playing. Several of these ideas were very successful and ones that I will be doing again in the future (percussion assignment preferences and working on several songs but then voting on which ones to perform). Students gave positive feedback on having more voice and choice in these selections.
Lastly, there were several smaller activities or parts within lessons that I discovered in the Summit last summer or in my other research that we implemented in class. We continually change up how we do Good Things (question of the day, would you rather, 2 truths and a lie, get to know you questionnaire, fist to five, favorite….). I have had students conduct a warm-up, help with being music librarian, and help teach new-to-band students on their instrument during rehearsals. We ranked ourselves using a preparedness chart on the marker board (sightreading - familiar - comfortable - confident - performance-ready). We also discuss perseverance and working through the hard parts of music being like tackling obstacles in life. Finally, setting small goals rather than large ones makes them less overwhelming and gives us points of celebration along the way.
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