Thursday, July 8, 2010

New Ideas and Influences

This is a blog on New Ideas and Influences from a wonder class I'm taking on project learning in music education:

Identify several key ideas from the readings that have influenced your thinking and discuss how the ideas would have an impact on your current practice. Cite where appropriate.

“Project design is front-loaded work.” (Boss & Krauss, 20)

I have learned to invest much more than I ever thought I could into the planning of a project, and I’m excited to see what more investing might bring. Going through my work with a fine-tooth comb, revisiting the text and learning dispositions to check that I have covered all possible angles, and knowing that when reflecting post-project, I will find many more new angles and blind spots I can improve on.

I know I am learning how to plan, and how to plan for the right things. Instead of planning for simple knowledge or motor-memory skills, I am learning how to probe deeper into the thinking and level/type of skill to teach my students.

A definite area of impact is in the area of web-based applications. During the course of this project, and prompted and inspired through the “your turn” categories in the text, I have created a wikispace and a blog, as well as created an account for surveys and a section for forums on my website. I have also investigated and viewed many online resources for creating, composing, listening, and playing with music. These sites are also a great place to create a professional learning community where I can follow and interact with people that have a shared passion for the teaching of music. It has also opened myself up for peer-evaluation, and assessing my “readiness for teamwork” (Boss & Krauss, 29). I am following the suggestions given to students and self-evaluating on how well I give and receive critical feedback, becoming comfortable with sharing my work with others, regardless of whether it needs work or not, and being honest and cooperative with fellow teachers. I am learning to “learn together” (Boss & Krauss, 30).

“Planning for rigor and 21st – Century Skills” (Boss & Krauss, 47).

Addressing the needs of students to adapt skills for the 21st century, as well as cultivate learning dispositions within the learning project, is an important topic gleaned form the text. Digital-Age Literacy, Inventive Thinking, Effective Communication, High Productivity, Life-Skills, and use of technology propel students towards success in the modern world. I am now much more invested in educating the literacy of my students on many levels. literacy boils down to learning to be independent, aware, and productive citizens.” (Boss & Krauss, 49).

Information literacy and the Big6 are goals for me to incorporate into my teaching. The Big6 skills are: “(1) task definition, (2) information-seeking procedures, (3) location and access, (4) use of information, (5) synthesis, and (6) evaluation.” (Boss & Krauss, 111). These big topics are excellent glue to bring a project to fruition.

“Taking time to reflect helps students feel good about their accomplishments, but more importantly, reflection can be the thing that makes learning really stick.” (Boss & Krauss, 147).

The final portion (just for this reflection, the effects of this text on my teaching are endless!) of the text that I will take with me and incorporate into teaching is the improvement of reflection. I am a culprit of not understanding the importance of self and student reflection, and am so excited to work it into my teaching. Not only will it wrap up what we have learned, but it will scaffold for future lessons and pack everything together in a final concept. The importance for students include growth in learning dispositions, self-reflection and monitoring, understanding of learning process, milestones in where they are, and a view of where they will go in the future.

This text really is a field guide, and it is practical and applicable to use throughout the teaching year.

Identify current practices and strategies or beliefs that you are ready to discard, retire, or leave behind as a result of newly acquired ideas.

I am willing to leave behind the old Bloom’s Taxonomy [Knowledge, Comprehension, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Synthesis] for the new Bloom’s taxonomy [Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create], and although that’s a pretty basic one, it is important in that I am discarding a majority of lower level thinking, and taking on the higher level thinking of analyzing, evaluating, and creating. (Boss & Krauss, 47). I liked the words that the text uses to equate with analyze, evaluate, and create. They are:

Analyze—examine, explain, investigate, characterize, classify, compare, deduce, differentiate, discriminate, illustrate, prioritize

Evaluate—judge, select, decide, justify, verify, improve, defend, debate, convince, recommend, assess

Create—adapt, anticipate, combine, compose, invent, design, imagine, propose, theorize, formulate (Boss & Krauss, 47).

These are great words in formulating your projects, and innovating ways for your students to stretch their hands on/minds on experience.

I am leaving being my old way of grading, of using the rubric, and putting in its place a criteria-driven evaluation process. Though I will still need to provide the schooltools grade, and on inspiration from Phil Greco, I am interested in developing a separate “report” card that focuses more on individual student progress and achievement rather than the comparison of a student to an arbitrary student “norm” “above norm” or “below norm” rating that does not address every aspect I want my students to develop.

I am also leaving behind writing objectives that are aimed at behavioral responses only, that do not address the higher level of thinking and skills that cannot be addressed simple through behavioral response. This does not mean I am leaving behind all parts of precision, accuracy, performance, technique, or literacy. Quite the opposite, I am expanding on the basic knowledge of these aspects, spiraling up into higher dimensions of music experience.

Seeds of possibility have been growing in my mind since last summer about new ideas/practices/strategies that I can incorporate into the classroom. The project format is giving me the medium to launch these ideas, and I am leaving behind my apprehension about exploring them…and what I will do with them is listed under the next heading:

Discuss how you intend to transform some past practices (activities that you have done with students) into projects.

I would like to transform my study of certain classroom songs from simply singing them. I would love to hash out a project on classroom songs where students choose a song, investigate the historical and social context, the musical dimensions, their personal meaning, and then present their song to the class. Then the class as a whole would learn from the student, and singing the song would then have much more meaning, as it would be in a stronger context. They would still be completing the national and state standards, but for their individual piece, they would have explored avenues of cultural dimension, historical context, and expression in music on a self-motivated plane, and in turn would share their findings with peers.

A second idea would be for studying composers. We could establish a type of “hall of fame” or some sort of group that composers would be inducted into. Students would be studying 1 of several choices of composers, studying their life and work. We would develop hall of fame criteria, and have students justify their choice of composer. They could research debate, or relate it to governmental voting, and base their arguments around that system. (Boss & Krauss, 48).

Another idea was what I considered for my original project: an online forum for High School band students to musically mentor Elementary band students. Elementary students would have the opportunity to pose questions regarding their instrument or music in general, articulating their question for the HS students who would reply and in turn pose questions to get the Elementary students thinking about new facets of music. Experts may also be tapped by inviting them to join the discussion, or “weigh in” on key elements or questions.

Another idea would be for students to create an expression symphony page. Students would identify songs that raise specific emotions in them, and would post the songs beneath that category of emotions. A range of songs and emotions would be gathered in one location, such as an online site or put together in CD form if need be. We could then talk about the similarities and differences between the pieces, finding if we all had the same reaction to the pieces, or if different music elicits different emotion from different people.

Another idea would be to explore sound. This one is still sketchy in my mind, but I would love to construct an experiment linked with physics to explore vibration, how it works, what happens when it hits our ears, how we respond to different types of vibration, what happens physically and mentally when our body experiences sound vibration. It would be an interesting look into the physics of music, and could be linked to a study of the 5 senses, and how senses trigger memory and feelings, like a song bringing us back to childhood, or a smell bringing a hidden memory to the surface.

These are great wonderment topics, and are taking me from what I know to what I want to know or wonder about. Hopefully as I reflect through the year, I can add to KWL with what I have learned, and be able to articulate how I learned it. (Boss & Krauss, 96).

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