A Musicians Case Against Narrowing the Curriculum

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A Musicians Case Against Narrowing the Curriculum

• Steve Williams, Fine Arts Consultant
• MO Dept. of Elem. and Secondary Education

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A May 2005 Harris Poll on the attitudes of
Americans toward arts education found
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Furthermore
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Academic Atrophy

• 75 of principals reported increases in
  instructional and professional development time
  for reading, writing, and math
• 50 reported increases in science
• 25 reported decreases in the arts

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To Satisfy NCLB Testing

• 71 of schools reduced elementary instructional
  time in at least one other subject.
• 33 cut social studies
• 29 cut science
• 22 cut art and music
• 14 cut physical education
• (ASCD Compact for Learning, p. 8)

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2007 NAEP Results
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2007 NAEP Results
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Missouri Data
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Show-Me Standards

• 40 Content Standards
• What students should know
• Specific by content area, and requires High
  Quality teacher instruction
• 33 Process Standards
• What students should be able to do
• All teachers can use Process Standards to
  administer their content

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Process Standards

• Process Standards (also called Perfor-mance
  Standards) have inherent DOK
• Use Process to teach Content
• Most Process Standards utilize higher levels of
  DOK
• Most GLE documents have referenced the Process
  Standards, but the fine arts have not

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2007 Communication Arts MAP Test

• Goal 1 Gather, analyze, and apply information
  and ideas
• 1.1, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8
• Goal 2 Communicate effectively within and beyond
  the classroom
• 2.1, 2.2, 2.4
• Goal 3 Recognize and solve problems
• 3.1, 3.5, 3.7

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Frequency
Number of test items that assess specific Process
Standards in tests for grades 3-8 and 11.
http//www.dese.mo.gov/divimprove/assess/tech/a
lign_ca_rpt_final_06.pdf
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Process Standard 1.6

• Discover and evaluate patterns and relationships
  in information, ideas and structures
• Patterns in music scales and arpeggios, forms
  (ABA, AABA, ABACABA, etc.), motifs, chords
• Relationships in music similarities and
  differences in styles and periods, relationship
  between music and culture/history, chord
  progressions

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Purposeful Examples of 1.6

• When rehearsing, use form designations instead of
  rehearsal letters.
• Instead of start at letter c
• Say start at the beginning of the 2nd strain
• Challenge students to extrapolate patterns found
  in their music (by ear, possibly).
• Dance sequences, physical movements are examples
  of patterns.

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Process Standard 3.5

• Reason inductively from a set of facts and
  deductively from general premises
• Inductive reasoning using specific facts,
  details and information, students make a
  generalization or rule
• Deductive reasoning using a principle, theory,
  or statement, students must supply supporting
  details

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Purposeful Example of 3.5

• Give students the opportunity to use deductive
  reasoning
• Given a key signature that contains 2 flats, ask
  students to determine the key using 3 supporting
  details from the music
• 1.
• 2.
• 3.

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Purposeful Example of 3.5

• Give students the opportunity to use inductive
  reasoning

• What is the key based on these facts?
• There are 3 sharps in the key signature
• The first note is A
• 3. There are no accidentals that would imply a
  minor key.

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Process Standard 2.2

• Review and revise communications to improve
  accuracy and clarity
• Musicians do this when they
• Practice and self-assess
• Make tuning, articulation, and balance
  adjustments
• Listen to their own
• performance and critique

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Process Standard 2.2

• Review and revise communications to improve
  accuracy and clarity
• Artists do this when they
• Develop a plan and maintain focus
• Choose elements for effect
• Create artwork and self-assess

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Content Process Learning

• Music GLE AP2B9-12
• Use musical terminology to describe their
  personal response to a musical example
• Process Standard 1.5
• Comprehend and evaluate written, visual, and oral
  presentations and works

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Content Process Learning

• Art GLE PP3A6
• Create original artwork using the following
  subjects realistic portrait, abstract portrait
• Process Standard 2.5
• Perform or produce works in the fine and
  practical arts.

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Higher Order Thinking Skills

• Use effective questioning techniques to draw
  higher-order thinking out of your students.
• The MAP test frequently asks students to justify
  their answer.

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Eliciting Useful Student Feedback

• Questioning is necessary to formatively assess
  student understanding
• Often students who dont understand will not
  volunteer
• Learning that a small minority of students get
  it is not a sufficient factor in deciding to
  move on
• Dont ask for comprehension, check for it

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Checking for Comprehension

• Follow-up questioning hold students accountable
  for their responses
• What makes you think that?
• What might happen next?
• What if this was different?
• Can you support your answer with details?
• How do you feel about the composers choices?
• Why did the artist choose this media?

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Self-Assessment

• Students feed-forward their learning when they
  match their work to samples, self-assess, or work
  with peers to make their products of better
  quality. Teachers support this learning by
  helping students determine their next steps so
  they can eventually learn how to get to the
  learning destination themselves.
• - Anne Davies, Involving Students in the
  Classroom Assessment Process,
• in Ahead of the Curve (2007), Douglas Reeves,
  ed., p. 37-38

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The Music Teacher and Student Achievement

• Music teachers should teach music, English
  teachers should teach English
• However, there are strategies that music teachers
  can use to help students think more critically.
• How can music teachers contribute to their own
  content while reinforcing what is taught in other
  areas?

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Singing in General Music

• A childs reading success depends upon their
  effective use and understanding of oral language1
• Elementary music students develop skill in oral
  language by telling/re-telling stories
  (sequencing) and acting them out (kinesthetic
  connection)
• 1Chrys Dougherty, ed. (1999). Improving Early
  Literacy of Preschool Children. Austin, TX
  University of Texas

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CA Reading 1BPhonemic Awareness

• Grade K develop the ability to recognize sounds
  (phonemes) in words recognize rhyming words.
• Children enjoy and learn from rhyming and
  alliterative text, and thrive on rhythmic and
  repetitive phrases.
• Early phonemic awareness is a proven predictor of
  later reading success

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Activities that Develop Phonemic Awareness

• Sing nursery rhymes, rhyming songs, and
  alliterative songs and chants
• Play listening and rhyming games
• Call and response
• Count words and syllables
• one note one syllable
• Blend onset-rimes (CA Reading 1B, grade 1)
• Onset initial consonant sound of a word
• Rime rest of the word
• Ex cat /c/ - at

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The Reading Process Eye Movement

• How do the eyes move as we read words?
• Saccade
• Movement of the eyes during reading. The saccade
  includes the fixation and movement to the next
  fixation, with an occasional return (regression)
  to check for understanding.
• During reading, the average fixation duration is
  about 225-250 ms and the average saccade size is
  8-9 character spaces.

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How the Eye Moves
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CA Reading 1DFluency

• Grade 3 Read grade-level instructional text
  with fluency, accuracy, and expression adjust
  reading rate to difficulty and type of text.
• Music reading helps students pace their saccadic
  eye movements, forcing them to maintain a steady
  rate
• Rate of music reading also adjusts with the
  difficulty of the music.
• Better music readers are able to capture more
  notes and have shorter fixations.

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Purposeful Activities that Develop Fluency

• Singing with expression
• Focus on diction, articulation
• Playing an instrument with expression
• Rhythmic recitation
• Call and response
• Working with languages involves applying
  appropriate inflections and stress

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CA Reading 1FPre-Reading Strategies

• Grade 6-8 Apply pre-reading strategies to aid
  comprehension access prior knowledge, preview,
  predict with evidence, set a purpose and rate for
  reading.
• Music teachers do this when they walk through a
  new piece of music.
• Teach students to scan music for information,
  devise a plan for sight-reading.
• Have students pre-determine the speed of their
  sight-reading

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When We Have to Write

• Student writing is not improving at an acceptable
  rate.
• Music and art teachers are being asked to
  administer writing prompts to their students.
• When we have to write, make sure that the student
  writing contributes to the curricular goals of
  the fine arts program.

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Writing Effective Promptsby Jana Scott, Central
RPDC

• Set the stage or tell the situation
• Give suggestions for how to think about the topic
• Identify the audience or purpose and give clues
  as to the writing being elicited
• Narrative tell, describe
• Expository describe, explain
• Persuasive convince, persuade

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Expository Example

• (A) Audience behavior expectations are different
  for school concerts and arena concerts.
• (B) Students need to learn what is acceptable
  behavior at various types of performances.
• (C) Write an essay that explains to younger
  students how to act at a school concert.

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Assessing Student Writing

• Music and art teachers should use the same
  scoring guide/criteria as the English teachers
  use.
• Work with English teachers to learn how to use
  the scoring guide, and ask for their help the
  first few times you use it.
• Show students that effective writing is expected
  not only in English class, but also in music and
  art class.

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Using 6 Traits to Assess
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Graphic Organizers

• Graphic organizers are anything where students
  represent information visually
• Venn Diagrams
• T-charts
• Tables
• Flow charts/time lines
• Pictographs
• Pie charts

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MAP Test Graphic Organizers

• On ALL communication arts MAP tests, students
  will be asked to create or fill in a graphic
  organizer.
• In lower grades, the ability to make sense of the
  graphic organizer provided is a common struggle.
• The ability to comprehend, create and use tables,
  charts and other graphic organizers is critical
  to student success.

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DESE Resources

• Scoring Guides and Released Items used to assess
  student writing http//www.dese.mo.gov/divimprove
  /curriculum/newwebpages/commarts.html
• Assessment webpage with specific MAP data
• http//www.dese.mo.gov/divimprove/assess/
• Curriculum webpage for GLEs
• http//www.dese.mo.gov/divimprove/curriculum/GLE/
  

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Evaluations

• Please take a few
• moments to complete
• an evaluation for this
• workshop.

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Thank You!

• Steve Williams, Fine Arts Consultant
• MO Department of Education
• Ph [phone]
• E-mail steve.williams_at_dese.mo.gov