Student Intellectual Engagement
Student Intellectual Engagement
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I. To what extent are students intellectually engaged in a classroom of high intellectual energy?
I. To what extent are students intellectually engaged in a classroom of high intellectual energy?
Around December, when the second season of "The Mandalorian" was premiering, I noticed that there were many musical elements of the theme that were developmentally appropriate yet challenging for my Orchestra students. There is a great benefit to tapping into the music that students are listening to for teaching, it makes the learning one and the same from the enjoyment of the music outside of school hours. Below, you will find two videos. First, a sample of a student recording. On the right, a student's created "metronome," using Google Music Lab, a website that makes learning music more accessible through fun, hands-on experiments. The student example on the right was one of many that inspired me to have students create their own "metronomes."
Student sample - Madalorian.mp4Mandalorian Backing Track on Chrome Song Maker.webmWhile it is very subtle in this example, the underlying pulse is not consistent. This was the case with many students' recordings. And it makes sense, too. There are a number of difficult aspects to performing this theme accurately. Notice the first measure has no down beat. Then, there is a tie into the next measure, evading the down beat again. There is no articulated down beat until measure 5. On top of that, the penultimate measure has compound divisions (triplets). And I haven't even expounded on the pitch material yet! Students are so indoctrinated into the major scale by high school that teaching other scales like the minor scales, modes, and Blues scales to name a few. If it were in a major key, the key signature tells us that we are in E-flat major. However, because G is a prominent and repeated note, and C is the note we end on, with a B-natural immediately preceding it, the implication is c minor. I am very glad my music education allowed me to obtain a deep understanding on rhythm and pulse, and of intervals and various modalities. However, I should have realized that there would be too much to break down with my original plan to teach it as a one off lesson. But, this turned out to be a very good thing.
I decided this week, again, after listening to the recordings, that rhythm would be the area on which to focus. Everyone watched the ScreenCastify below with me screen sharing over Zoom, to show them how it works. Then, students got to created their own backing track rhythm. There were various restrictions on the website that made the process very simple, and the only rule was that as we played, we had to continue to feel the sixteenth notes. We tried this in a number of traditional music class ways-- clapping and counting, playing on our open strings only, looping two or three measures at a time-- to internalize the pulse. The post assessment recordings, if you will, had drastically improved pulse.
II. What is the nature of what students are doing?
II. What is the nature of what students are doing?
Musician Research Project
Musician Research Project
Equity is a huge part of my teaching, if not a guiding value. In college, after reading from some of the great scholars like Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, bell hooks, among others, and experiencing the powerful abolitionist and antiracist conferences and programs, I became fervently committed to inclusive and culturally responsive teaching. With the freedom the hybrid and virtual teaching has provided to ensemble curriculum, I took the opportunity to make the most of it. I asked myself, "how many Black and Brown string musicians do I know? Composers? What about Asian and Pacific Islander?" I realized that if I couldn't name many, my students would have trouble as well. Thus, I crafted, to the best of my ability, a Musician Research Project.
Musician+Research+Project - sample.docx.pdfStudent Sample 1.
III. Are they being challenged to think and make connections through both the instructional activities and the questions explored?
III. Are they being challenged to think and make connections through both the instructional activities and the questions explored?
Composition Project and Sample
Composition Project and Sample
In our Composition Project, students were asked to choose some form of the G scale (see the project description above and left). We had spent the past few months building to this moment. First, we investigated what an interval is, the distance between two pitches. Slowly but surely I introduced the minor scale, and we spent time in lessons building the scales verbally and then playing them. We even studied the Dorian mode, another collection of intervals different from the major scale, that was featured in a piece of repertoire we rehearsed.
As in Blooms Taxonomy, creating is the highest expression of knowledge. Thus, the composition project was a fun and summative assessment of the students' knowledge of the major, minor, and even Dorian modes in practice. The sample (above, right) shows a student's mastery on the G Natural Minor scale. Not only is the key signature appropriate, but the first and last pitches are G, the home base of the key. If I could have changed this project in some way, I would have made more frequent, small-scale compositions integrated sooner. In that way, students would have the opportunity to be creating and failing in low stake ways, which may have allowed for more substantial and complex projects. While Orchestra is primarily about playing a string instrument, it is important to remember that creating is just as necessary as recreating great masterworks of classical music.
IV. Do the teacher's explanations of content correctly model academic language and invite intellectual work by students?
IV. Do the teacher's explanations of content correctly model academic language and invite intellectual work by students?
Student Sample comp project .pdfTo the left is a sample composition project. Since students had two weeks, and ample class time, to work on this project, I chose a sample each day at the beginning of class to workshop. You'll see I highlighted aspects of the work that is working well, and I used red to bring attention to room for improvement. At the bottom, I express this feedback using the academic language necessary for composition which I read and expounded upon aloud with everyone present. This workshopping produced extremely high-level final compositions, not only for those students whose pieces I dissected, but in general. This is certainly a tactic I will use again for our future creative work.
V. Are students asked to explain their thinking, to construct logical arguments citing evidence, and to question the thinking of others?
V. Are students asked to explain their thinking, to construct logical arguments citing evidence, and to question the thinking of others?
During our introduction to intervals (the distance between two pitches), I experimented with the idea of the older, more advanced students teaching the younger ones. To the right, you will find a sample of a senior's explanation of intervals, based on clear directions from me, and using the violin to demonstrate.
Interval Tutorial, Francesca.movVI. Are the instructional strategies used by the teacher suitable to the discipline, and to what extent do they promote student agency in the learning of challenging content?
VI. Are the instructional strategies used by the teacher suitable to the discipline, and to what extent do they promote student agency in the learning of challenging content?
Our quarter three project, Practice Log, was a structured means of tracking students' progress with their solo pieces. Below, I provided a sample, aspirational version of the project. The left and right examples are two ways students tracked their progress.
Click here to see more about Cluster V.III on Weekly Recording Assignments
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