Instructional Design and Assessment

Reflections for Week 5...

The readings and videos for this week covered two of the areas I’m considering for my Capstone Project at the end of my degree - curriculum and assessment. My 5th-8th grade band program is a program without a home. I am employed by a high school to run a program that serves 13 local K-8 schools. Students get a 20-minute lesson each week at their school and meet with the students from the other schools at the high school on Monday evenings for a full band experience. Because of this unique arrangement, and not really being a part of the high school or the individual elementary schools, things like curriculum and grading aren’t currently included in an official capacity.

Limited contact with my students makes many projects and things of that nature difficult to include. My music selection is usually dictated by what I would like to cover with my students over the course of the year - mainly looking at time signatures, key signatures, styles, and things of that nature. Last year I actually sat down and filled out a curriculum map that the “regular” teachers use and found it very enlightening as I filled out the different areas and looked for things that I might be missing in my quest to cover as many areas as possible over the course of the year. I never considered this to be a backward design since it’s the way I’ve always done my repertoire planning. I think rehearsal and performance groups lend themselves to this kind of design quite well. Last year I had the opportunity to teach an upper-level music theory course at the high school. After 15 years of teaching only private lessons and a weekly rehearsal, this was my first time in a regular classroom. I taught that class in the opposite direction, mainly focusing on the path of the textbook, with slight modifications along the way, rather than letting the end goals dictate the path. I did make use of Finale for ear training and rhythmic dictation quizzes as well as musictheory.net, among other websites, to augment along the way. I’m looking forward to exploring curriculum more in the next few years to see how I can do a better job of including other projects and aspects of learning into my teaching.

Assessment in my teaching situation has always been interesting. With the major focus of my program being private lessons, I get to give immediate feedback to my students all day, every day. I give them my thoughts on what went well and what needs improvement, and often ask them to do the same. I find it difficult to get middle school aged students to compliment themselves. They’re quick to point out all their mistakes, but often struggle to find something that went well, even when they’re doing a great job. I think it’s good to get them to find the positives too!

On the technology side, we use tuners and metronomes (usually apps, not standalone devices) for feedback in lessons and many students ask for suggestions for apps for their own devices at home as well. I’ve been using SmartMusic quite a bit for the last few years, sometimes more as a play along tool in lessons than an assessment tool, but a number of students have it at home. With those students, I do use it for assessment. Teaching in 13 different schools and having no control over the computers in those schools, it’s difficult to set up any kind of SmartMusic station for students to use without me present.

This year I’ve expanded the ways students give me feedback on their own playing and on the playing of others. My students fill out exit tickets after our Monday evening rehearsals where they list what we did best as a group, what they personally improved the most on, what they think we as a group need to focus on next time, and what they’re going to work on at home on their own. There is a list of words at the bottom (dynamics, style, articulation, etc.) that they are asked to include in their responses. They can earn points for our yearly awards by going to other concerts and performances and in the past they just needed a note from a parent saying they went. This year I set up a Google Form that they fill out where they tell me more about the concert, what they liked, and what they thought the group could do better. It’s been neat to see into their musical minds this year!

Unfortunately, none of these fall into a grading scheme, so not everyone participates, but I’m thankful that many students do. If you have ideas for more ways I can include feedback and self-assessment for my students, please let me know!