8th Grade Music Research (& Inquiry)

Music Research is an Inquiry-based music elective offered to 8th grade designed to provide an alternative to participating in our band.  Based exclusively on student-centered research practice, this course will help to prepare our students to succeed in high school and college, while creating opportunities for students to explore music-related topics of their choice.

The Inquiry model encourages student-driven research experiences that typically include “productive struggle” as students construct new understandings based on the information they encounter.  The music research projects that I have designed are NOT teacher-driven and will NOT be a recitation of facts gleaned from sources. Instead, these projects will require students to think deeply about topics and to make meaningful connections to their own lives and to the wider world.  Here is a link to the Student Contract.

Another important component of this class will be presentations.  Students will practice creating a variety of different presentations to share-out their research and will hone their public speaking skills in the process.

We will begin the year by exploring genres of music.  Each of us (including me!) will research one genre, and then we will combine our presentations and teach each other before moving on to two fun extension activities.  During this introductory project, students will review & practice using NoodleTools while learning how to create annotated citations and how to create and appropriately use in-text citations.   Next students will focus their research on their own favorite genre as they identify a representative artist/band and song.  Finally, our genres unit will culminate with students interviewing an older adult about their favorite genre and artist growing up.  

In the 2nd quarter, students will be selecting a current event topic in music that they are interested in, such as the ethics of copyright and sharing, the impact of streaming services on the music industry, how music impacts behavior, etc.  We will be using the Gale database Opposing Viewpoints to research articles that represent multiple perspectives on our topics.  The focus will be on evaluating information looking for bias and credibility - two key skills in this age of mis-information.  Finally, students will construct new meaning from the information they find, creating an evidence-based claim analysis of their topic.  

In the 3rd quarter, our 8th graders will dive into a Biography Project where they research an important person of their choosing from the music industry - past or present.  They will have to research not only the accomplishments and impact of their chosen person, but they will also need to research the historical and geographic context of their lives.  Students will then create a variety of unique products to share with the class that will reflect their understanding of their person and their contributions to the music industry.  These products will include excerpts from a journal, the plans for a trip and an itemized list of what their person would bring, a resume or job application for their person, a contextual timeline, a speech their person would give, an obituary for their person, or a list of websites they think their person would like along with an explanation for why.

For the 4th quarter, students will Build Their Own Inquiry (BYOI).  They will take all the skills and tips they learned throughout the year and use them to investigate a music-related topic of their choice.  This time they will culminate by writing a 3-page research paper with in-text citations and a bibliography for me, followed by creating a visual lesson on their topic for their peers complete with an assessment piece to evaluate how effective their lesson was.

In addition to these major projects, we will also explore other resources including the Library of Congress Digital Archives and the Digital Public Library Collections. 

All work will be housed in Google Classroom & NoodleTools.  Students will work in a workshop-style environment, collaborating and inspiring each other.  Reflection will be encouraged throughout the research process to help students self-identify strengths and areas for growth.