4 Week Year 11 Music Unit – The aspect of Performance

Hi there,

Attached below is a 4 week unit plan for year 11 music I created for my university assignment. This unit plan I designed is based around an excursion to the wonderful QPAC where my students would be exposed to the incredible atmosphere of the Lyric Theatre. After watching a number of up and coming artists perform, and being inspired, my students are to choose a song from a list provided with a variety of genres and prepare for their own performance in front of their peers three weeks later. The students can either perform as a solo artist or create a small ensemble group, the choice is theirs!

I really enjoyed developing this unit as it is exactly the kind of creative assessment I want to implement and teach when I am well into my career as a teacher. I think inspiring students is a great way to help them engage in the assessment and aid them to develop and create new ideas for their performance skills and knowledge.

Please, take a look, I hope you enjoy!

Performance Unit Plan

Revisiting my evaluation of 5 Music Education Resources

After receiving some brilliant critical feedback from my peer Sara Vinci I have revisited my evaluation of the 5 Music Education Resources I posted earlier.

http://wrightstuffmusic.com/in-the-classroom/music-teaching-resources-for-2012

This site’s info blog provides a number of helpful links to resources in which a teacher can use to wrap their heads around the implementation of ICTs in their classroom. The website links to some information books on how to utilize YouTube to a further extent, integrating it with websites and student blogs. The site also links to a book in which gives music educators a step by step guide to using free recording software programs such as Garage Band (Mac) and Mixcraft (Windows), also explaining how to get the best set up when using school computers. The site then provides links to the more professional programs like Protools and Sibelius, both being industry standard programs. This in particular I see as a very important thing for students, familiarising them with these sorts of programs early in their education as they will most likely be using these out in the music workforce. I have had experience with using Sibelius and Pro Tools and although they can be utilized at any grade level, I feel that these programs in particular would be more suited to years 10-12. This site is also licensed under a Creative Commons license.

http://www.musictheory.net/exercises

Music Theory is a fantastic resource for today’s music teachers. The site provides access to a number of different exercises for students to undertake including: scale and note identification, fret board chord and interval identification and note/scale ear training. Teachers can create their own exercises they have customized to fit the kind of learning students have been doing and then provide direct links for their students to these exercises on the site. Music Theory also comes in APP form so teachers can easily set homework tasks and have students complete them on the ease of their tablets or even phones. This is a fantastic resource for teachers to integrate the use of ICTs with the musicology side of music in the classroom and would be particularly useful I engaging students in the junior levels (8-10) but could also be very engaging for the senior students. The use of this ICT in the classroom and at home clearly shows potential to amplify students understanding of the musical elements. And it’s free!

http://musicteachtech.wikispaces.com/Resources+for+Music+Teachers

Music Teach Tech is a great resource for beginning music teachers who are looking for new and create ways to implement ICTs and Literacies in the classroom. The site gives mountains of useful tools to teachers including lesson plans for classroom and instrumental practices for primary and secondary. There is a resources for teachers page which is a list compiled of general tools, classroom tools, online choral resources, online handout templates, online sheet music (free as well as priced), and blog sites for music educators. There is an activities page for both primary and secondary which gives teachers access to a number of useful classroom activities to try with their students including implementing programs like audacity and muscore (which are both free programs) into the lesson. This resource has an approved Creative Commons License.

I actually only discovered this resource as I was researching for this assignment and stumbled across it and I’m glad I did as I know I will be utilizing this site as a beginning music teacher.

http://www.sharemylesson.com/high-school-music-teaching-resources/

Share my Lesson is a lesson plan and activity ideas sharing page where teachers can go to find inspiration for creative and engaging classroom activities. This site provides a vast number of different lesson ideas for grades 9 through 12. The lessons to each grade are broken into six categories: Composing and Performing; Instruments; Music Elements and Theory; Music from around the World; Music History and Composers; Musical Styles and Forms. Within each of these components is a list of resources for teachers based on that grade and specific component, whether that be lesson plans or ideas, information articles and research papers for teachers to gather interesting information on the subjects. The literacy side of this resource is of great use as there are a number of papers and information articles for the musicology side of the classroom which could be used for students in their research and analytical essays. Another great resource for the beginning music teacher and even those who are just looking to shake up their teaching approach.

https://www.teachervision.com/math/resource/10340.html

Creating the connection between numeracy and music cannot always be so simple as many people don’t even realize through basic notation devices that you are in fact utilizing numeracy skills. So how do teachers work to create a clearer connection between the two and allow for students to make this connection in conjunction with music activities?

This page on Teacher Vision is a fantastic resource for music teachers who are looking for ways to implement a numeracy focus into their lessons. The site provides a number of full lesson plans such as: Math and Music: Fibonacci Sequence; Patterns in Music and Math; Graphing Pitch. There are also a number of lesson plans and ideas which are circulated around creating a clear and succinct connection between Jazz and Mathematics in terms of improvisation permutations and rhythmic innovations. This would be quite a useful resource for music teachers even as just a starting point for gaining insight into the implementation of numeracy into music lessons as this cannot always be the easiest connection to make for teachers. There are a number of these lesson plans which are aimed directly at being implemented in grades 8-10. One such lesson being the ‘Jazz and Math: Improvisation Permutations’ where students explore how many different rhythmic combinations they can improvise in a jazz or blues piece of music. They derive a mathematical formula and apply this through trial and error techniques to calculate the number of possible rhythmic combinations they can create. This is a great way to help students make a clear connection between math and rhythmic notation in music.

Evaluation of 5 Music Education Resources

I enjoyed delving into a number of great resources for current and future music teachers. There is some great stuff out there if you know where to look!

http://wrightstuffmusic.com/in-the-classroom/music-teaching-resources-for-2012

This site’s info blog provides a number of helpful links to resources in which a teacher can use to wrap their heads around the implementation of ICTs in their classroom. The website links to some information books on how to utilize YouTube to a further extent, integrating it with websites and student blogs. The site also links to a book in which gives music educators a step by step guide to using free recording software programs such as Garage Band (Mac) and Mixcraft (Windows), also explaining how to get the best set up when using school computers. The site then provides links to the more professional programs like Protools and Sibelius, both being industry standard programs. This in particular I see as a very important thing for students, familiarising them with these sorts of programs early in their education as they will most likely be using these out in the music workforce.

http://www.musictheory.net/exercises

Music Theory is a fantastic resource for today’s music teachers. The site provides access to a number of different exercises for students to undertake including: scale and note identification, fret board chord and interval identification and note/scale ear training. Teachers can create their own exercises they have customized to fit the kind of learning students have been doing and then provide direct links for their students to these exercises on the site. Music Theory also comes in APP form so teachers can easily set homework tasks and have students complete them on the ease of their tablets or even phones. This is a fantastic resource for teachers to integrate the use of ICTs with the musicology side of music in the classroom. And it’s free!

http://musicteachtech.wikispaces.com/Resources+for+Music+Teachers

Music Teach Tech is a great resource for beginning music teachers who are looking for new and create ways to implement ICTs and Literacies in the classroom. The site gives mountains of useful tools to teachers including lesson plans for classroom and instrumental practices for primary and secondary. There is a resources for teachers page which is a list compiled of general tools, classroom tools, online choral resources, online handout templates, online sheet music (free as well as priced), and blog sites for music educators. There is an activities page for both primary and secondary which gives teachers access to a number of useful classroom activities to try with their students including implementing programs like audacity and muscore (which are both free programs) into the lesson.

I actually only discovered this resource as I was researching for this assignment and stumbled across it and I’m glad I did as I know I will be utilizing this site as a beginning music teacher.

http://www.sharemylesson.com/high-school-music-teaching-resources/

Share my Lesson is a lesson plan and activity ideas sharing page where teachers can go to find inspiration for creative andengaging classroom activities. This site provides a vast number of different lesson ideas for grades 9 through 12. The lessons to each grade are broken into six categories: Composing and Performing; Instruments; Music Elements and Theory; Music from around the World; Music History and Composers; Musical Styles and Forms. Within each of these components is a list of resources for teachers based on that grade and specific component, whether that be lesson plans or ideas, information articles and research papers for teachers to gather interesting information on the subjects. The literacy side of this resource is of great use as there are a number of papers and information articles for the musicology side of the classroom which could be used for students in their research and analytical essays. Another great resource for the beginning music teacher and even those who are just looking to shake up their teaching approach.

https://www.teachervision.com/math/resource/10340.html

Creating the connection between numeracy and music cannot always be so simple as many people don’t even realize through basic notation devices that you are in fact utilizing numeracy skills. So how do teachers work to create a clearer connection between the two and allow for students to make this connection in conjunction with music activities?

This page on Teacher Vision is a fantastic resource for music teachers who are looking for ways to implement a numeracy focus into their lessons. The site provides a number of full lesson plans such as: Math and Music: Fibonacci Sequence; Patterns in Music and Math; Graphing Pitch. There are also a number of lesson plans and ideas which are circulated around creating a clear and succinct connection between Jazz and Mathematics in terms of improvisation permutations and rhythmic innovations. This would be quite a useful resource for music teachers even as just a starting point for gaining insight into the implementation of numeracy into music lessons as this cannot always be the easiest connection to make for teachers.

Why Teach the Arts?

This could be a little deep…

My reasoning for why I want to teach music has always been on a more personal level. My Grandfather was a massive influence on my musical understanding, as he had, in my opinion, an unparalleled passion for all music. I was fortunate enough for him to share this passion with me. He opened my eyes to a great many things. He explained to me that although in life there are many things that will come and go, music is something that will always stay. It is one of the only things that cannot be taken away from you because it lives inside us, a fire that simply cannot burn out.

I took this on board at a very young age and developed an insatiable passion for music of all genres, learning a number of instruments along the way. Even through my early years of high school I always knew that I wanted to teach music and see the same passion awaken in others. I want my music classroom to be an open book where students feel comfortable in expressing themselves freely through song. To ignite the passion for music in others, whether that be through the study of musicology, performance or composition I feel will be incredibly rewarding. And I cannot wait to see what I in turn will learn from my students as they express their views and aspirations for music with me.

These are but some of the reasons why I want to teach the arts.

I had fun!

Overall it has been another great semester. Crazy busy of course, but great as always. I can honestly say I have learnt a lot through all my course but particularly in my ICTs and pedagogy course. I still have TONNES to learn of course but I now feel far more confident in approaching the classroom of the future.

There are so many great opportunities to implement ICTs into teaching now and I really hope I will follow along this trend and continue to broaden my horizons from a ICTs point of view when teaching in the coming years.

I really can’t wait to be creative!

Reflection is great practice

I am a fan of reflecting. Not ashamed to say it, I love to reflect on things I’ve done. That can be professionally or just on things in my general life that I am trying to achieve.

I see great value in reflecting on ourselves as individuals both in the general sense and critically. In reality it’s one of the only concrete ways of self improving. Obviously we can always be told by someone else, but I guess when you are figuring out the answers for yourself about yourself…it can be a very useful approach to work out ways to improve yourself further, in whatever you may do.

Final Recap

It was great to take part in a sort of summarising exercise with our ICTs and pedagogy course. We were asked to fill in a table with which had a number of the frameworks and models for ICTs integration we have been covering throughout the course this semester.

I unfortunately am one of those learners who sometimes may lose sight of a pedagogical view or framework if I have not been putting it into practice myself frequently. So when I looked at the table we were asked to fill in and saw things we covered back in weeks 1 and 2 I had a moment of thinking: “Oh wait.. what’s that again..?”

So going through and finding the information needed on each framework and model to fill out the table I think was a great way to reopen my thinking in that respect. Although I did have to go back to refresh my memory a few times. Great idea! 🙂

Great Experience

On my professional experience so far I have had the chance to observe a number of different teachers in their practice and it has been a fantastic opportunity, to which I am very grateful!

Although when you go on professional experience you are placed with one mentor to observe and work with, I have found that there are some great benefits in observing a number of different classes. There are so many different operators who all have great ways of approaching their teaching and classroom/behaviour management.

There is no one concrete way towards approaching these things so I feel very strongly about getting a wide berth of experiences in terms of observing experts do this in their environment. It’s a great way to take a look at how you approach teaching and develop strategies to better your skills.

I’m looking forward to next week!

Overhead Projectors? ..really..?

I can safely say that I did not expect schools to still have overhead projectors sitting around! I got quite a shock when I walked into a class and an overhead projector was being used to deliver a lesson. I guess I just thought that with most classrooms having built in digital projectors that the good ol’ overheads would become obsolete?

Having said that, I can definitely see the appeal of the OP, they are simple, easy to use, and don’t ever really malfunction. But the limitations are something which will always turn me towards utilizing the digital projectors. They are an invaluable resource in the classroom. But maybe the question here is, has there been enough PD in how to utilize the digital projector’s to their upmost potential? All interesting thoughts..

This post was inspired by one of my fellow uni students who also had the pleasure of seeing an overhead projector at her school.

https://daniellecrocker1.wordpress.com/2015/05/25/overhead-projector/

A look into the future of Secondary School English

This is great!

Those were the words that kept running through my mind as I sat in on my first observation of a Senior English class in the first week of my professional experience placement. The students were working in groups and each given a factor (social, religious, racial) in which to gather some information about in relation to the context and submit it into an online area (blog) the teacher had set up for the class to use. The classroom laptops were handed out and were about 3 laptops to a group of about 5 or 6 students. However, there were one or two laptops which were not working and so one group only had 2 laptops to do their research on.

Now from my experience of when I was in high school doing this sort of task in class my thoughts were that not much work was going to get done as they didn’t have enough students researching.

As I came back around to see what each group was doing, I saw 3 students in that group with their phones out. So of course my reaction was to walk over to tell them off. But then as I got closer, I noticed what was on the screens of the 3 students phones, journal articles! The students saw that they couldn’t use the classroom resources to complete their research to contribute to the task, so to make sure they were pulling their weight in the group, they retrieved credible and useful articles of research on the context their group was given by using their phones.

Now many people might say ‘big deal I do that all the time’, but for me it was just a moment where I realized how education is heading in terms of all kinds of technology being a useful resource in the classroom.

It was a great thing to experience and I will not soon forget it.