Top Ten Tuesday 17/05/11

Favorite Choral Warmups – in scale degrees

These are  scalar warm-ups, not to be confused with warmups for actual choral repertoire. These are just my favorites to sing!

1. 1, 121, 12321, 1234321, 123454321, 51 (major)

2. 1,3,5,8,7,5,4,2,1(major)

3. 123,345,54321 (minor)

4. 1,2,7,1 (major)

5. 123454321,234565432,345676543,456787654,56789765,54321 (major)

6. 1,2,3,2,1,7,1 (minor) ascending chromatically

7. 1,3,5,8,5,3,1 (major) (Where are you going tonight?) ascending chromatically

8. 5,3,4,2,3,1,2,7,1,1 (on syllable me-a) (minor)

9. 1,8,8,8,5,3,1 (major) (ascending chromatically on syllable ya)

10. 12345,5,54321,5,1 (minor) (on syllable oo)

… where people are encouraged to connect with people who are doing the same

Part 4- Creativity Series

Today will be the last post of the Creativity Series. This post features how I encourage students to connect with other creative students during regular music classes.

1. Integrating other arts and subject areas in class activities. Students engaged in music activities can play for a class who is responding to music using art. A choir can sing for a class studying lyrics of a particular song. Math students who are learning a song to remember math facts can relate it to their musical activities.

2. Informal performance (informance). I will often have classes perform their music informally to other classes. Sometimes this is at the beginning of their creative process (when they have just begun learning a song) or near the end when they are preparing for a performance. They also enjoy showing administrators or other school staff where they are at in a particular piece. I have been doing some research on the topic of informances for presentation to parents instead of the traditional performance. I would love to hear from anyone who has invited parents to an informance to share some ideas.

3. Connecting with other schools and community groups. An important part of playing in a wind band is performing at festivals. Most high school students perform at a music festival yearly and it is sometimes part of a band trip if one is not available nearby. Festivals are not only a great avenue for performance, but also to hear other groups perform. I think we can also brainstorm ways to go beyond this… perhaps meeting for lunch with a group who performed the same selection as your group and discussing the qualities of each performance. Taking students to area concerts or hosting them at your school is also a way to forge links with community groups and discuss musical and creative ideas.

4. Link to faraway schools via webcam and snail mail. I very much like the idea of a music program havina a partner school somewhere else in the world. They can bounce ideas off each other, perform their music for a different audience, get to know each other’s musical customs and experiences, and connect to other musicians.  A webcam is incredibly helpful to arrange meetings with the partner school, but I think it is also important to communicate on a more individual level. Pairing students up and sending individual postcards or letters is a way to reach this goal and have students discuss their musical development and creative ideas.

I hope you enjoyed reading this Creativity series as much as I enjoyed writing it. Come back soon for more posts on similar topics.

… where people are encouraged to learn from failure

Part 3- Creativity Series

As part of the Creativity Series, today I will feature how I encourage students to learn from failure during regular music classes.

1. Encouraging students to play passages in front of their peers. Students play short passages or test passages in front of their peers on a regular basis. As they get used to class performance, they learn to ignore small failures and celebrate large successes. Students are always given two attempts at playing a passage and are encouraged to always play passages twice to try and improve from their first attempt. Other students are encouraged to give constructive criticism and we spent quite some time learning what is constructive and what is not!

2. Improvisation. Students are rarely confident in their first experiences in improvisation. I like to tell students that every single time they improvise, they improve. They learn which notes sound best in each chord change, which rhythms are most engaging, which patterns should be repeated, how to begin and end a segment.

3. Encouraging students to display effort. In my opinion, students most often experience failure because of a lack of effort. For example, students who do not perform as well as others can attribute their “failure” to a lack of practice or concentration. A good tool in this case is the recording device (like the H2 Zoom) to show students how they sound when they perform something in a sight-reading capacity before they have had time to practice. Then, you can give them 10 minutes to practice on their own, and record them as a group again. They will almost always notice the difference and with some prodding, can identify that practice was instrumental in their improvement.

4. Developing skills in self-compassion, kindness, understanding and acceptance. Students are often harder on themselves than we are on them. This is why punishments that are devised by students are often ten times more harsh than we would have created ourselves. All this to say: what some students perceive as failure is merely experimentation. They need to have the self-confidence to accept that perfection on the first attempt is nearly impossible, and be kind to themselves and each other.

I hope you are enjoying reading this series on Creativity. There may be an interruption between Part 3 and 4 for other content and I would like to remind everyone that I will be away from the blog for a few days early this week.

As always, thank you for reading!

Planning for a business trip

My career at Long and McQuade officially begins this Sunday, when I go on a trip for a 4 day training course. I will not be posting on the blog so expect a few days of absence with a return late next week. I will however, be posting Part 3 of the Creativity series tomorrow. Look for it then and I hope to hear your comments!

A new career venture

Great news to share!

I will be working at Long and McQuade Music as their newest Educational Services Representative! I will be the liaison between music educators in this province and the store; running recruitment nights, advising on repertoire selection, ordering instruments and supplies and everything else music and school-related. I am very excited about this new career step. I will be continuing on with the blog here, but in the interest of full disclosure, I would like to note that I am no longer a practicing music teacher. I will still be posting my experiences and thoughts on education and music in elementary and secondary classrooms. My new experiences at L & M will also be featured.

Thanks for reading and please look for Part 3 of the Creativity series soon,

Chantelle

A new twitterer and an interview

I have finally joined the ranks of those on Twitter and thus the 21st century. 🙂 If you are also on twitter and would like to be notified of new blog posts here, you can follow me @cvnsh.

In other news, another interview today! This is for a position at a music store, as an Educational Services Representative. This basically translates to being on the road working directly with band directors and would be a wonderful opportunity. Fingers crossed!

Look for Part 3 of the Creativity Series early next week.

… where people are encouraged to try partial ideas

Part 2- Creativity Series

As part of the Creativity Series, today I will feature how I encourage students to try partial ideas during regular music classes.

1. Using the classroom as a forum for sharing of questions and thoughts. Students need to feel comfortable to ask questions at any time and share their observations. For example, I ask students to turn to the person beside (in front, behind) them and share one thought about how the band sounded on the last excerpt. With the exception of when my arms are raised on the podium and the band is playing, students may put their hands up at any time to share a comment. I often have students who will put their hands up to share when they play a passage correctly/perfectly for the first time, or when they make a connection between the two pieces of repertoire we are playing, or share how this section reminds them of something we played as a group last semester.

2. Encouraging composition and improvisation. Students are given opportunities to play a call-response pattern with their neighbor, section or the entire class. I sometimes have students provide the models for class-wide echoes as part of our warm-ups. Students are encouraged to experiment with melodic fragments on their instrument, notate them, perform them for me after class and combine them with a friend’s ideas to make a composition. Young students enjoy developing their own rhythmic patterns, improvising melodies over an ostinato, or making up song lyrics.

3. Asking open-ended questions instead of obvious response or leading questions. I will admit that I often use leading questions to guide students toward a new musical discovery or towards making musical decisions as a group. However, it is also important to ask open-ended questions to stimulate creativity. For example: Why do you think this performance was better than the other day’s? How could you change the whole feel of the piece by altering only one thing? Why do you think the composer chose the trumpet to play the melody here? What can you tell me about the accompaniment at measure 22? How would you compare this piece of music to the one we are learning in class? If you could describe this piece of music in one word, what would it be? Can you imagine a scene in a movie where we could use this piece?

4. Problem-solving in the music classroom. Problem-solving allows students to be creative in that they devise their own solutions to issues and also find several different answers to the same question. For example: How many different sounds can you make on the tambourine? Here is a musical scale with one note missing, which note is it and how do you know? How can you play a song that is not written down? Group work is very conducive to developing problem-solving skills where students share creative ideas with one another. Small groups can be challenged to: perform a passage in a country-western style, compose a short piece based on one sentence from a literary work or one postcard picture, compare the qualities of music to an object such as an umbrella or kite, etc. I would encourage the groups to begin the process by brainstorming together and sharing any ideas, no matter how small. Students could also keep a journal where they note down any interesting ideas that come to mind.

… where people are encouraged to reflect

Part 1- In my last post, I announced the start of a small series about creativity in my music classroom. Today begins with a look at how I encourage students to reflect during regular music classes. 

1. Using listening logs for all listening activities. Students reflect on listening pieces about once every two weeks. I usually choose pieces based on what we are performing or to introduce new styles. I have students listen for specific things but also include a space for asking questions about the listening excerpt and writing comments. I also expand this activity occasionally to include reacting to music by drawing and movement. 

2. Using practice logs where goals and reflections are the key. Students do not get graded on how many minutes they have practiced, but rather by what goals they have accomplished, their personal reflections on their playing, and their evaluation of their product and process. Students can use this space to ask any questions about their repertoire, brainstorm ways to fix a problem, reflect on what worked and did not work in their practice session, and note which practice strategies were most effective for them and why.

3. Reflecting on how a piece of music came to be. Students often experience a disconnect with composers, and thus feel that the creative process is inaccessible to them. I try to do composer studies along with every piece in our repertoire. There is a great series, Composers on Composing for Band, which has several composers comment on the process of  composition. Students then reflect on the context in which the piece was created. Was the composer writing for a commission, inspired by a musical theme, inspired by an event in his/her life or arranging another piece of music. This allows students to understand that the creative process can be kickstarted by just about anything. Students write reflections on how the piece might have sounded if the inspiration, process or technical aspects of the piece had been different.

4. Students reflect on their progress. Students keep a log of new music terms and new notes when they are in beginning band. A middle school band’s repertoire of notes expands from 1 to several over the course of a year. By revisiting their log, students are able to chart their progress and see how far they have come.

5. Students reflect on their learning strategies. I like to ask the whole group reflective questions such as: Was it easier to learn how to play the new note D by looking up the fingering in your method book, or by watching me model the note at the front of the classroom? Did you remember the definition for marcato better by reading the definition or by explaining it to your stand partner? How many times did you practice this measure before you could play it perfectly? Did your effort pay off in learning this new piece? Did you reach your performance goals or your technical goals?

6. Students reflect on their likes and dislikes. Students often have very vivid reactions to music, whether it is a piece they are experiencing through listening or through performance. They either love it or hate it. I like for students to reflect more deeply on why they enjoy the types of music they do and describe for me what it is that they specifically like or dislike. Is the tempo helping them feel upbeat, do they like the repetitive rhythms, do they like it because it is familiar, do they dislike it because their peers dislike it, etc. I also like to link to pieces they like as sort of a springboard to new pieces or styles that share some characteristics.

Are there any other ways you have students reflect in the classroom?

So, how does my classroom measure up in the creativity department?

In this post, George Briggs poses the following question: How do you encourage creativity in children every day? It is definitely an interesting and thought-provoking question. In the music classroom, it is easy to assume that the environment is creative because of our artistic subject matter. However, if we are not conscious of allowing students daily (constant!) opportunities to be creative, I believe we are doing them a disservice. In a follow-up post about schools as creative environments, Mr Briggs quotes Steven Johnson’s theory “that good ideas (i.e. innovation stemming from creativity) spring from environments where people are encouraged to reflect, try partial ideas, learn from failure and connect with other people who are doing the same.” I’d like to use these frameworks for creativity in a series of posts, detailing in which ways my classroom culture supports creativity.

1. Environments where people are encouraged to reflect

2. Environments where people are encouraged to try partial ideas

3. Environments where people are encouraged to learn from failure

4. Environments where people are encouraged to connect with people who are doing the same

Part 1 begins Monday!

Amazon Delivery Day

It always feels like Christmas morning when I receive a new book! Can’t wait to start reading this one…

via Amazon

When I start reading, I’ll share my favourite parts!