teaching for musical understanding
Music is learned through listening, performing, and creating.
Music making requires collaborative interaction and fosters interdependence.
Musical understanding is dynamic and generative.
Musical knowledge connects with other ways of knowing.
Music learning involves solving musical problems - listening, creating, and performing problems.
Many aspects of music are related to other disciplines, including symbolic representations of ideas, pattern, form, structure, shape, color, and interpretation in other arts (including language arts); connection to ratio and sets in math; study of sound in science; and historical and cultural connections in social studies.
In grades K-12, students will have multiple opportunities to experience music of a variety of forms, textures, meters, and modalities.
Musical concepts are taught in the context of a broad range of culturally and historically authentic musics of a variety of styles and genres.
Music making requires collaborative interaction and fosters interdependence.
Musical understanding is dynamic and generative.
Musical knowledge connects with other ways of knowing.
Music learning involves solving musical problems - listening, creating, and performing problems.
Many aspects of music are related to other disciplines, including symbolic representations of ideas, pattern, form, structure, shape, color, and interpretation in other arts (including language arts); connection to ratio and sets in math; study of sound in science; and historical and cultural connections in social studies.
In grades K-12, students will have multiple opportunities to experience music of a variety of forms, textures, meters, and modalities.
Musical concepts are taught in the context of a broad range of culturally and historically authentic musics of a variety of styles and genres.
I view myself as designer, facilitator, sometimes a cheerleader, and the kids as learners/teachers. We are both on a continuum of understanding. I do not know everything about music, they know that because I allow myself to learn things from them. The learners come to the classroom with their individual perspectives and each with their own lens of life experiences. It is this perspective of the roles of the learners in my classroom that develops the environment that fosters learner agency. The learning process is constructing our own understanding of experiences and organizeing them through the lens of our prior experiences. People learn that way no matter what classroom you are in or content are you are thinking about. As designer and facilitator, I establish experiences and support the learners through scaffolding within an environment of risk-taking as they construct their underestanding. In order for learners to fully understand conceptual connections, they must be aware of the intent of the designer. After reading Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design, I have begun looking at lesson planning as designing experiences. Beginning with the end in mind, I ask myself what I really want the learners to understand? It is my role to create real life experiences for learners to navigate through new musical problems using their prior experiences. Viewing and solving problems through multiple perspectives becomes an expectation that the learners in my classroom bring with them to every new experience. Also allowing time in my classroom for reflection and the realization that as learners develop their understanding, their lens through which they view the world changes. This brings Lev Vegotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) into mind.
This is a mindset of educators, not specific lesson plans.
At the end of the learner's K-12 musical experience, I would like to graduate independent musician who are divergent thinkers.
This is a mindset of educators, not specific lesson plans.
At the end of the learner's K-12 musical experience, I would like to graduate independent musician who are divergent thinkers.