Should We Be Grading Our Students At Young Ages?
By janice | March 8, 2010
This was a question that I came away asking myself after the first ever Music Education Twitter Chat which took place recently on March 2nd, 2010 involving approximately thirty music educators worldwide. It was a very busy hour with interesting tweets coming from all directions and loads of different opinions, resources and articles to check out.
Throughout the talk we discussed what effective methods of assessments were currently being used and are available to a performance based class or teaching situations. There were many different ways of tracking student’s progress highlighted and loads of resource options to use throughout the talk which are definitely interesting to use and look at.
Grading certainly has it’s place with older students, however I have strong feelings when it comes to young students. I feel that grading a young child with anything lower than an A can harm much more than it helps.
I believe that it doesn’t really matter how good our students at younger ages are at the subject, it’s the enthusiasm and motivation the student has for it that counts most.
If a student is enthusiastic, progressing and is having fun then this should deserve an “A” and as specialized music teachers, we should be able to provide the interest, variety and fun to the lesson so that every student can succeed at a high level in their own way.
I would love to have a discussion of your thoughts on this issue. I know everyone has different teaching requirements within their school settings and studios and I would love to hear your ideas and stories. Just leave a comment in the feedback box below.
Click here to get a full written transcript of the talk.
Some useful resources and comments:
“Smart Music is worth every penny – I make my college students use in techniques classes”-MiamiFlute
Just got a Promethean Board. Using the ActivExpressions for “instant” assessments has been eye-opening!-@FamiliarLtlFrog
“I once set up a BLOG and had all of my students list 3 pros and 3 cons in the comments of what/how they were learning.”-@Zweibz7
Check out” Jim Frankel’s Blog Post about the future of iPads in music ed ”
-@katiesw1
“I’ve had good success with Hyperscore. Kids seem much happier with their songs”- @Guitarguy73
There’s an interesting TED talk by Tod Machover and Dan Ellsey which I found on the Hyperscore website about about making music accessible to everyone and what various programs and interfaces do.
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Topics: Classroom Music, Music Education Articles, Music Teaching
Fun Leadership lesson for the Music Teacher
By janice | March 5, 2010
I thought this was excellent food for thought for all teachers and a great practical lesson as to why we do the things we do.
It’s done by a guy called Derek Sivers who is a musician, blog writer and business owner and he’s caught footage of a guy (who looks a bit like a lone nut in the beginning) dancing at a music concert. It takes a while for the another guy (Derek refers to him as the first follower) to come in and make it feel welcoming for others to join. Once others come in the whole thing gains momentum and becomes the coolest thing to do.
Derek states that the role of the leader is over glorified and it’s really the first follower that has transformed the “lone nut” leader into the leader.
He goes on to say that we are all taught and told to be great leaders, but really the best thing we could all do is go out and find “lone nuts” all doing great things and support them. It’s these elements that create a movement.
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Topics: Classroom Music, Fun and Games, Just for Fun!, Video, music teaching inspiration
Music Lessons for a Substitute Music Teacher
By janice | March 3, 2010
Its here!
Last year we ran a competition, where we asked members on our mailing list to submit ideas for our ebook competition.
In this competition we asked the question:
“What is the single best idea you can give a substitute music teacher, or that you can use yourself when substituting for someone else”
The result was over 50 amazing responses from all over the world. There were listening activities, performing ideas, complete lesson plans and great classroom games.
What we decided to do was put just twenty or so that really fitted into the category “Classroom Games for Fun and Learning”, and put them into an ebook. The rest we will publish via this blog, our facebook page and more appropriate places that suit the individual style of the submissions.
In this book are mostly ideas that fall into the category of Classroom Music Games.
These games are those amazing little gems that keep children inspired about coming to class, keep you popular as a teacher, and most importantly keep yourself sane, as you know you’ll have something to fall back on if your lesson goes awry.
How much does this cost? Not a Cent!
We were going to build a product around this and charge $20 or so for it, however we felt that the ideas in this little book were so good that they stood alone, and we want to share it with all of our clients and friends at no charge.
So click here to download and read the ebook.
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Topics: Classroom Music, music lesson plans, music teacher resources