Musichouse Idea Exchange
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Here is a Grade 9 Composition Task shared by Ruth Morden. It is a course-long, culminating project, divided up into small chunks. Thanks so much for sharing Ruth! Added March 1/2018.
Assessment Tools
Instrumental Performance Rubric
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Beginning Playing Concepts
5 Note Songs - "A few basic songs using doh-re-mi that I start my Gr 9s out on before they have music in front of them." Shared by Ruth Morden.
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First Major Scale - The following are four little hand-outs created to assist in connecting and/or assessing students knowledge of the notes and fingerings of their first major scale. Students are asked to write the notes of the scale and shade the accompanying fingering diagrams to demonstrate the connection between the two. This also demonstrates their basic understanding of the finger diagram concept itself which can confuse some. Handy. MIE
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Beginning Ensemble Concepts
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Creating Functional Ensembles - This very simple four question hand-out is designed to get students thinking about how ensembles work. They are lead to the understanding that ensemble playing is a team effort and that each player is responsible for the ensembles success. This is one of the very first things I ever talk about with my students - well before I put an instrument in their hands. In fact we would practice ensemble concepts through games and simple songs before we ever played.
MIE
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Ingredients for a Good Performance?
A very simple collection of the most basic things for kids to think about when they are doing a solo performance or an ensemble performance. It all comes down to listening. MIE
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Practice Journal - A simple sample of a useful tool. Connect the parents (or another responsible adult) to what the child is working on by having them help monitor student practice. MIE
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Ear Training Templates
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Ear Training Practice Answer Sheet
This is just a basic page with columns that we used on a daily basis for ear-training practice. Each day we would start our class by doing a 'column of 20' and a rhythmic dictation. The columns of 20 may be for interval identification or chord identification or whatever. Students would write their answer to the left of the / and then when we took them up they would write the correct answer to the right. This way they were able to track the things that they were consistently getting wrong and focus their practice to work on those. MIE
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Interval Recognition Tracker - A simple chart where students write in names of tunes that help them remember melodic intervals. MIE
Ear Training Test Answer Sheet
Just a simple template for the ear training part of any test. We may use only one or two columns at a time depending. Students would keep these in their notebooks to track and monitor their progress. MIE
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Elements of Musical Construction
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Special thanks to Sheri Brenneman for this complete set of Elements Powerpoints, Worksheet and Fact Sheets. Awesome!
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Elements of Music - Powerpoint
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Basic definitions of Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Dynamics, Tone, Timbre and Form. MIE
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Element Word Wall - These two files contain the headings and contents for an 'Elements' word wall.
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Element Definition Development Sheet - Here are three examples of a sheet that I used in a three step process with students to develop an understanding and definition of each individual element of music. Step one was a discussion and listening exercise that had students come up with their own definitions for the elements. Step two involved sharing and melting down tall of the collected definitions into something that we could all agree on moving forward. Step three involved the development of a small library of appropriate descriptors for the element. We eventually would have one of these sheets for each of the seven constructive elements so students could refer back during any listening/analysis exercise. MIE
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General
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Sibili Si Ergo - This wonderful little bit of 'Newfie Latin' was shared with me by a mentor teacher when I taught in Lewisporte, Newfoundland. It's a wonderful little thought-provoker that gets students to see that sound is a language and can be presented in a million different ways. Four pages, each saying exactly the same thing but in four different visual presentations. Also great for helping students see why their written notation must present what the reader (musician) expects to see - as in 'be neat and accurate'. MIE
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Note Tracker - May seem basic but this little item makes keeping student notebooks trackable and up-to-date very easy. Student s appreciate it and are quickly aware when they are missing something. MIE
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Listening and Talking About Music
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Pies and Music: Discussing Musical Tastes
A simple, light-hearted way of introducing the importance of keeping an open mind when talking about tastes and what makes music 'good' music. MIE
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Listening Logs - If listening is the most important thing we do when we play then certainly it is important to practice our listening skills every day. Here are just three sample of listening log formats that I have used with different groups. Simple to adapt . MIE
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Reporting Tools
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When working with beginning band students I always found that the first mark update came around before I had a lot of quantitative data to share with parents. As a result I developed a one page update form that broke down the various elements of our work so that parents could see how their child was progressing even though there may not be a mark to show for each particular thing. On the back of the form I would list the basic concepts that we had covered in class up to that date. MIE
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Student Communications
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I should preface these the following by saying that I always found it most valuable to invest significant time and effort in the instrument assigning process so as to minimize the number of students who need to (or even want to) change instruments. That said, even though we do our very best to guide students to instruments that we believe they will find success with, we will always have the odd situation where something was just not as it appeared and the fit could be better. Because of this I always had students fill out a brief survey after four or five weeks so that if an adjustment needs to be make it can without major disruption to the students overall learning. MIE
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Theory
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The following are a set of PDF files with hundreds of theory exercises. They are from Finale®Worksheets, Copyright © 2009 by MakeMusic, Inc. MakeMusic grants permission to duplicate this worksheet for non-profit, educational use only, provided each copy includes this copyright notice. Copies may not be sold or included in any materials offered for sale to the general public.
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This short video made by Sheri Brenneman shows how to use a very simple 'add-on' feature to insert examples of musical notation into handouts, worksheets, quizzes etc when working in Google Docs or Google Slides. Thanks Sheri!
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