Professional Development

Effective professional development is vital to improving teaching practice and the quality of our schools (Desimone, 2011).  School districts that are intentional about providing formal and informal professional development opportunities promote success in their schools.  Seminars, workshops, conferences, and local or national professional organizations provide access to knowledge, skills, and best practices of educators and experts across the country (Professional Organizations Webquest). 

Additionally, cultivating a collaborative school culture allows teachers the chance to learn from one another and provide support for new (and returning) educators.  This year, my school implemented a bi-monthly requirement for teachers to spend at least 45 minutes collaborating with other teachers in the school.  Though this is something I already do often, it is a great reminder to collaborate more intentionally.  Teachers prepare a brief report of what is discussed during their collaboration meetings and submit it to our administrators by the end of the week.  This report provides accountability and is a useful tool for summarizing the ideas, problems, and/or solutions discussed while collaborating.  

Administrators have also changed our district's in-service formats to include workshops and seminars that give teachers opportunities to learn from the expertise and experience of educators in our district. These changes demonstrate a new era professional development in our school district.  I look forward to seeing the results of these new formats on our professional practice. 

Multiple Intelligence Theory & Assessment

Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences provides evidence that individuals process information in eight different ways (see in Figure 1).

Educators can use this information to create varied assessments in their classes that allow students to utilize their strengths and process information in the way they best understand it.

One way to do this is to provide assessment options.  For instance, a teacher could ask students to demonstrate their learning at the end of a history of Jazz music unit by drawing a cartoon strip, writing a newsletter, composing a song, acting out a short scene, creating a visual model, crafting a timeline, or compiling a slide presentation.

Another way to help students is by providing useful feedback on assessments to help those who may not excel at a certain intelligence understand how they can make improvements. Rubric feedback, verbal feedback, and written commentary are all useful tools for this purpose.

Smarter Balanced Assessment

The Smarter Balanced Assessment is aligned with the Common Core Standards and seeks to measure students progress toward college and career readiness. It challenges students in grades 3-8 and 11 to not only respond to multiple choice tests but also assesses their critical thinking, problem solving, and analytical skills.  It accomplishes this through the computer adaptive assessment consisting of a bank of questions that sequence and filter based on students previously answered questions.

Overall, I think the idea behind this test is stellar. Students should be tested on the critical thinking and problem solving skills rather than just their memorization of facts and concepts. Moreover, it's beneficial to have a test that adapts to students individual levels of understand based on how they answer questions.

Just like any other test, this one has it's flaws.   There is still not a concrete solution for ELL students and it is still impossible to capture every student's unique learning needs with one test.   Another problem for schools is the time-consuming nature of this test, as they may need to rotate groups of students through multiple shifts of computer testing.  However, it is encouraging to see that we are working to remedy these issues and will continue to develop ideas for standardized tests that can capture the best picture of our students' progress.

KWL In The Music Classroom

KWL charts are not something I utilize often in my music classroom.  However, music history and composer units lend themselves well toward this learning strategy.  It would be beneficial to survey students before we begin a unit to pre-assess their knowledge and allow them an opportunity to articulate the things they want to learn about. Then I can modify the content of the unit to address some of their interests.  By catering to their natural curiosity, students are more likely to remain engaged in their learning.  It will be interesting to see how this method impacts my classes during our second semester music history unit.

Essay Tests in Music Education

Most music education testing is performance based or objective multiple choice tests.  However, when studying music as an undergraduate student, my music history tests were often essay tests.  I think essay tests can be effective in the music discipline because they require students to analyze, interpret, and synthesize the knowledge they've accumulated throughout the course.  Effective essay tests call for the transfer of the knowledge that one has learned through the communication of his or her thoughts and ideas about the topic. By regurgitating information within the framework of one's own thoughts and ideas, the student can demonstrate mastery of content at a deeper level than simply memorizing facts for a multiple choice test.  The end of the year final in my high school music classes incorporates short answer portions in addition to the multiple choice questions so that I can get a glimpse into my students minds and see if they have really mastered the musical concepts we've covered in class.

Performance Assessment Rubrics

Figure 1

Recently my high school instrumental students completed a performance assessment that judged their current skill level at playing our Christmas concert music.  They complete these assessments once every three to four weeks and receive feedback on a variety of criteria.  The rubric expands as we cover more and more aspects of performance technique throughout the year. Figure 1 is the first rubric in the series and evaluates students on their ability to play the correct notes and rhythms with appropriate stylistic expressivity.  They are also evaluated on their contribution to the ensemble.  Students perform this assessment in small groups of four to six members so that I can hear and provide accurate feedback for individual students.  This performance assessment not only provides feedback for students, but it also guides my instruction immediate following the test as I respond to the concepts and techniques that need further improvement (Shermis & Di Vesta, 2011).  Moreover, students are able to better understand  the elements of a quality performance and strive for excellence if they have a rubric that identifies these criteria.  I know for my students, rubrics have given them the ability to see beyond the score or grade, and to focus on the real-life application of performance techniques within the music discipline.

Formative & Summative Assessment in Practice

Formative assessment is a natural part of the daily music rehearsal process, while summative assessment is usually the end of quarter concert.  However, after taking classes this summer I decided to incorporate more summative assessment and see if that helped students take more ownership of their learning.  One example of this is a recent lesson plan in which choir students learned about blending and tone quality.  They completed a formative pre-assessment where they were asked to verbally brainstorm words and ideas associated with blending and tone quality.  Then I recorded the students singing one of our a cappella pieces before launching into the lesson. Formative assessment continued as I listened to students blend and tonal quality during the lesson activities.  I then recorded the students singing the song again at the end of the lesson. Then the students listened to both recordings and made observations and answered targeted questions using the concepts and vocabulary they learned during the lesson. This summative assessment allowed students to see the progress they made and analyze their own performance.  I found that the students enjoyed this assessment and they were excited about what they had accomplished in their performance technique.