Standard 5: The teacher of PK-12 music has skills in selecting, analyzing, interpreting, presenting, and evaluating music and music performance within the context of music education.
It is crucial that the teacher possesses the skills in selecting analyzing, interpreting, presenting, and evaluation music and music performance in the context of education. I have skill in selecting music because I selected the piece that I am going to play at the next divisional recital as well as my recital, and jury repertoire. I picked music that I know would help me improve some of the weaker aspects of my playing. I have skills analyzing music from my theory courses where we would analyze music that featured the concepts we were discussing, and in my instrumental conducting course we had a large project and part of the project was an analysis of Holst First Suite. I also gained experience when I analyzed my U-Band scores. I also have lead discussions about music from different time periods when I conducted U band, because one of my pieces was a couple of renaissance dances and I feel that it is important that the students understand the concepts and the purpose of what they are playing so that they can more accurately portray what the music is calling for. When I was conducting U-Band I also got experience evaluating music and what I was hearing and gained experience in using what I had heard to effectively plan what the next necessary step would be. I also have experience interpreting music, for instance in my Secondary Music class we are writing a lesson plan that involves interpreting music, and also us teaching a lesson that involves interpreting music.
I think that these skills are all very important for music students to be developing, so that they can be a well-rounded musician. That is why it will be an important part of my classroom that I teach them when the music is from, and we have discussions about what they believe the composer was trying to say with the music, so they can get experience thinking about more aspects of music than just playing the correct pitches. I also want to give them the chance to have a say in selecting repertoire for our program, because it is their band, and I want them to be playing music that they will enjoy. To guide them in the selection I want to have multiple pieces that I would feel are appropriate for them the play and let them listen to and sight read them, and let them give me input on what they liked about them and didn’t like. This also gives them ownership of what they are doing which is a good skill to develop. I also believe that the ability to interpret music is very important so one thing that I want to do is have discussions where we talk about a piece and what the piece is trying to say. It is important that I have experience and skill in selecting, analyzing, interpreting, presenting, and evaluation music, so that I can teach these important skills to my students.
Artifact Rationale
- Secondary Unit- This is important because this shows that I can analyze music but I can also find teachable concepts that are important to the student. For instance, in my we worked on intonation of close intervals, ensemble balance, and tone quality using the band transcription of Eric Whitacre’s Lux Arumque. In the unit plan I made it very important to present the information in ways that have the students do it. In one of the lessons I wrote for working on tone quality we alternated between singing the piece and playing, because it is important that they understand the differences between singing and playing since this is originally a choral piece. It is important that I can analyze music with education in mind, because analysis is great, but the teacher needs to know what and how to teach the concepts in the music. There are also many different types of assessment such as tests, and checklists for the students to fill out, but there are also more thought exercises such as reflections where they need to reflect on what was different about the exercise, and rationales where they explain why what they did relates to the song. My secondary unit shows my ability to analyze music and assess student learning.
- Elementary Unit- This shows my ability to select music for elementary students that utilize the concepts that I am trying to teach to the students. One of the important things that goes along with this is creating different ways for the students to use the concepts, so I found music that used these concepts, and came up with activities such as free movement, variations on games that they could use and sing the concept, as well as improvisation. There are also many different ways of assessing the learning such as identifying the concept in music. I also have one activity where the students do free movement with the call and response, and I assess their ability to aurally identify which is which.