Instructional Planer: Sample Assessment Tool

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Assessment Reflection

Q: Think about how you will use the Assessment page of your Digital Portfolio during your first teaching block. 

I will use my assessment page to remind myself my growth from what I though assessment in school was, and how it is actually more similar to my experience through singing lessons than I thought it would be. I will also use it as inspiration to motivate me to implement for, as and of learning strategies in not only my placement class, but also in extracurricular opportunities, like privately teaching in my home.

I will also use my assessment page, specifically the AER form, to use as reference to any questions or strategies I can use to help with assessment or planning ideas. I found some very comprehensive strategy guide on Assessment As Learning, as well as working with the Achievement Chart that I would like to really get to know more thoroughly.

Q: Choose 1 professional learning goal from your AER Strategy Form that you would want to emphasize during a job interview. 

I would talk about using the achievement chart to guide my lessons in an interview. I found an interesting resource that explained how to use the chart effectively, and it provided examples of how to implement each category in multiple facets. This is a key component and ability for differentiation, and to provide students with many different opportunities to demonstrate learning. Often, this is assumed in the end product, but I found it interesting that this resource suggested differentiating for each achievement chart category with performance, conversation and written strategies to assess knowledge, thinking, communication and application.

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Why Should We Sing in Middle School Literacy Class

Singing is so much more than saying words to changing pitches over rhythmic duration. Singing is technical. You must control your breathing. You must listen to your voice, and the other voices and instruments around you. You must be aware of your body, and manipulate it the correct way to produce a proper sound. Singing is intellectual. You must read poetry from the lyrics, make connections to historical, cultural and narrative allusions and influences in and of the music. Singing is emotional. You need to determine meaning, feelings, and over encompassing ideas, and ultimately decide the best path to convey those emotions and ideas through the vocal and performance choices you make. Singing is reflective. It makes you reflect on your own feelings about an idea or meaning. It also makes you reflect on your strengths, your areas of improvement and the next steps to achieve your goals.

So much goes into performing a song!

Communicating orally is much the same. You have to be able to have control of your voice, be able to manipulate your body to convey meaning, understand what you are saying and reflect on your successes and where you still need to go to get better.

There are a lot of resources and information on the benefits of singing and language development in young children. Children use singing to help them develop articulation skills when they begin to learn how sounds shape words, and the meaning of multiple words together. It helps them learn the construction of languages. Singing can be used to model the rhythmic patterns and tones in speech to better improve a child’s deeper understanding the structure of words and sentences. Studies have found that singing unfamiliar texts to familiar tunes can improve reading fluency.

With all this information about the benefits of music and singing to teach young students the basics of language construction, I assumed when I began to research a way to connect music and oral communication for a lesson plan for the middle grades, I would be overwhelmed with activities and rich content to choose from. I was highly mistaken. While there are many a blog or article touting the benefits of music/singing to communication skills, it is generalized into a surface statement without any accreditation or supporting findings. It was even harder to find any lesson plans, activities, or a direct explanation of the reasoning behind the connection of oral communication and music, specifically singing.

Reading through the specific expectations in the Ontario Language Curriculum under the Oral Communication strand, I immediately saw a correlation of required skills and my experience with singing instruction. Curious, I explored the Music strand of the Ontario Arts Curriculum. I found some expectations that could easily match with the oral communication expectations. Since I have 18 years of singing experience, and my teachable is vocal music, I wanted to create a lesson combining these two curriculums of oral communication and singing.

I choose to focus on the use of musical elements and vocal effects to infer meaning and mood, accompanied by facial expressions and gestures. I created a lesson plan that allowed students to compose an arrangement of a familiar holiday carol to convey a new mood, by changing elements such as pitch (tone), tempo (pace), accents (inflection), dynamics (volume) etc., and requiring them to perform the arrangement using facial expression and gestures to help communicate their mood. The students watching their peers perform were expected to actively listen to their peers, identifying the elements and expressions used and determining the mood from what they heard.

Cross Curricular Lesson Plan

In that single lesson, I used more expectations from both strands than I could assess. For music, the lesson provides opportunity to sing and/or play, in tune (C1.1), apply the elements of music to create a specific effect (C1.2), create musical compositions for a specific purpose (C1.3), identify the elements of music in the repertoire they perform, listen to, and create, and describe how they are used (C2.2). In the language strand, this activity asks students to actively listen to their peers’ arrangements, determine and communicate the inferences made from listening and watching their peers and identify the purpose of the performance. It requires students to create and present an idea with purpose (convey a specific mood), by using appropriate vocal and non verbal elements in a clear manner. That is roughly covering 5 music expectations, and over 10 oral communication expectations!

The above image shows the many connections between the Grade 6 oral communication curriculum and the music curriculum. Can you find anymore? 

Singing can be an engaging way to teach and practice almost all of the oral communication expectations in the Ontario curriculum. There are 3 overall areas listed as skills students should learn in middle school oral communication: listening, speaking, and reflection. Music and singing can easily be incorporated into each of these sections.

Listening

Music has the uncanny power to elicit powerful emotions, as well as convey a variety of intentional and unintentional messages with or without words. Music is complex, consisting of many layers and elements to be absorbed, identified and interpreted. Part of good listening skills consist of being able to isolate and identify all the elements of what you are hearing, direct or in direct. Music provides a rich combination of sounds to practice deep listening skills in order to gain information and make connections. This translates to oral communication because when listening to someone speak, you do not just hear the words someone speaks. Yes, you hear the words. But you also hear the tone or quality they use. You hear their stresses and pauses on certain words. You hear where they breathe. You hear the speed in which they speak. You hear the volume of their voice. All these elements give you information about what the words mean and you make inferences based on this information. It might have nothing to do with what the actual words said mean.

“I got promoted.” If someone says this in a higher tone, you might infer that they are excited, or if there is a quiver in their voice, you might interpret that they are nervousness or uneasy about the news. The words are still the same, but the implications are different. You can gain information by listening to the accents on the words. A stress on “promoted” might mean something very different to a stress on “I”, as if they were surprised they got the promotion. Volume might indicate angry, happiness, fear, sadness etc., speed might indicate the same emotions.

These elements go hand in hand with watching skills as well. Communication is more than just sounds, but also consists of observing and interpreting body language and how certain facial expressions, posture or gestures can alter the meaning of a certain phrase.

Singing teaches all of these skills. When you watch a professional singer, you will notice not only the lyrics they sing, but facial expressions they use, movements they make, accents or timbre of the words/notes, and the dynamics they use. These elements help the singer “tell the story” or present the meaning of the song on a deeper level than just text. One way to help students practice this listening skill of gaining information from elements beyond the text is by watching singers perform a song in a different language. They will learn to pick up information without the lyrics to help them. This allows them to isolate the cues needed to infer information. The music helps engage students more readily than simply listening to a speaker, as well as easier to hear and see the subtle indicators of non-text oral information.

Lyrics are the text of singing, and along with the elements discussed above, provide even more opportunity for students to practice analyzing meaning, point of view and overall comprehension of the song. They then are able to reflect on the influence or affect the elements had on their understanding, and the effectiveness of the performance/presentation. From there, connections to other musical or non-musical media or ideas can be made to further extend their knowledge.

Students need to practice actively listening to all elements of communicate to learn and apply what they see and hear into their own oral communications. 

Speaking

The above non-text elements that provide information to the audience of a singer obviously are important to put into practice when singing yourself in order to communicate effectively. By learning to listen and watch for these tools of communication and how it can be used to convey different meanings, students should then be able to understand and be able to implement them into the own singing.

While taking private singing lessons, and eventually when I privately taught vocal lessons, one of the biggest things I was told, and emphasized, was to “tell the story” of my song. Yes, technique was important too, but if I didn’t tell the story, what was the point of singing the song? So I would create a song map. I would interpret the poem of the lyrics, and figure out what I was trying to say as a character, and what I was feeling in each phrase. What was the most important thing in this phrase that I wanted my audience to understand? Would changing the stress on a word change the meaning I wanted my audience to understand? If I sang this part soft, what did that mean? If I sang it loud, it would often change the feeling entirely. For example, one song I love to sing is “I’m not afraid of anything” from Songs for New World (unfortunately I don't have a recording of me performing it) and the final phrases claim that the character won’t let anything or anyone stop her because she is not afraid. Now, I could sing the entire ending in full belt, loud and confident, and convey the same meaning as the word imply. However, I like the sing the final “I’m not afraid” softly, implying a contrasting idea to the text that perhaps I am not so unafraid and confident. Unfortunately I don't have a recording of me performing it yet, so I can't demonstrate what I mean. 

As a performer, facial expressions and gesture can reinforce or contrast with the literal implications of the text. Students need to practice the manipulation and understanding of body language’s ability to provide more information than just the text.

This video is from recital I had about 7 years ago, and is one of my favourite songs for expression and body language. I had fun playing 3 different "characters", living on 3 different levels, which I used my body language to help represent timidness, formality, and looseness. I played around with excitement, sarcasm and self discovery in my facial expressions. I used dynamics to convey and contrast certain ideas. Overall, a fun experience to practice communicating all this characters feelings! 

By singing, students can play with interpreting lyrics, experiment with vocal effects, create a character with distinct expressions, similar to drama, but with unique musical constraints and freedoms. Singing also develops students’ projection, posture and breathing regulation in a more controlled manner over drama.

Reflection

Singing is a very vulnerable and intimate physical endeavor. It is unique to you, and is purely an instrument of your body. Because of this, there is a deep connection to our singing voice. It is you close companion and can carry a lot of weight of self-confidence, and provide you with rich opportunities to reflect on your abilities, but also reflect on your emotional and physical well being. This dissertation explores the areas of reflection that can be gained from singing. The first is our Self-Reflective Vocal Experiences. Not only do you reflect on your own perception on your sound, but also on your narrative self vs. experiential self. It forces you to reflect on your introspective perception of your body, which then allows you to reflect on your physical and mental well being. Singing allows you to connect with your individuality of your own unique voice. By creating awareness of interpretations when listening and performance choices made to convey certain emotions, singing opens up a reflective window into the inter-workings of the emotional self and the perceptions of the world around you. Pretty deep stuff for a 5th grader!

Because of the apparent familiarity and control we have over our voice, we can use it as a flashlight, to explore its origin, history, mental and physical and social clues and influence. In this context, the voice can be seen as an avatar of the self; they both contain this paradox of being apparently timeless and immutable while being also inherently embedded in the present and shaped by our past experiences (age, traumas, accents, intonation, fillers, vocal posture). - Rebecca Kleinberger

Students also learn to assess themselves by listening and watching their performances and reflecting on what they might not realize they are doing, or notice improvements they didn't recognize at the time of performing. Students (and anyone, really) should be encouraged to record themselves during practice and performance in order to gain insight into their growth and provide an objective tool for perception.   

More research needs to be made into explicitly connecting the use of singing instruction and how it can improve and develop oral communication skills in not just young children, but also into the middle grades. Maybe this is something I will pursue in a master program one day, who knows. However, one thing is for sure. I am grateful to my grandmother for putting me in singing lessons. I have never been more appreciative of the extra benefit I gained from learning how to sing, and definitely have a deeper understanding how it has helped me in my confidence to speak, convey, and control my emotions. Now to teach my students the same skills!

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Road Map to Success

Success has Sprouted 

The Ontario Ministry of Education document, Growing Success, is a goldmine of information that is extremely valuable to pre-service teachers. It breaks down everything from navigating the curriculum expectations, explaining learning goals and success criteria, the types of evidence of learning, and the difference between formative and summative assessment. All this information is followed by a step by step walk-through of the report card system and what to expect when completing a class set two times a year, in addition to a progress report in the fall. In addition to the walk-through, it also provides a few chapters of strategies for assessing students with special needs, such as IEPs, ESL, or any modification/accommodations. 

What Do You Want?!?

One enduring idea that I gained from reading this document was the importance of developing learning goals and success criteria in student friendly language, and making it transparent consistently throughout the lesson. I don’t remember this being something I was aware of in my elementary schooling. This leads me to believe it might have been given during some assignments, but not explicitly explained as the point of the lesson, and how I could show I understood the concept. Going into my undergrad, and even into this post grad program, I appreciate how frustrating it is when you are given an assignment, but the purpose and criteria are vague. I do not know what direction to start, or how I can make sure I cover what is expected. Often, my work might vary greatly from that of my peers’. Because of this disparity in expectations, I may be disappointed with my final assessment, or feel like my work is worth more than the person who did less than me, but got the same result. This experience is something I will remember in my own teaching when planning any lesson. 

It is important to give students access to the learning goals and success criteria, and stress the importance of referring to the criteria often during the learning process. By doing this, student should develop the habit of checking guidelines as they work, and edit as needed. This will ideally help diminish the disparity between the quality of student’s work, as the habit develops. 

As I said, I will be sure to make the learning goals and success criteria clear for my students in my classroom, but I will also take this approach to my teaching privately. I spoke about my learning experience in vocal lessons growing up, and how the model was mostly assessment as and for learning, with minimal summative assessment. But I did not talk about my experience teaching privately. 

Outside the Classroom

I taught private voice lessons for about 15 students while covering a maternity leave. As a first time teacher with absolutely zero training in how to run a vocal lesson, I was at a loss at how to manage practicing or tracking student growth. I managed to swim with my head just above water, and my students progressed successfully, but it was not without many bumps along the way. If I had known about the strategy of providing clear learning goals and success criteria for a lesson, a span of lessons or even for a specific song or technique, not only would I have had an easier narrowing down a focus for feedback and finding strategies to help my students, but it would also have given students a clear understanding of what they needed to work towards during the lesson, and during their practice time. Students often would say they didn’t know how to practice, even if I gave them something to work on. Perhaps just saying “say these lyrics as a monologue” or “practice this exercise this week”, I should have given them attainable goals, and described how they would be successful in their practicing. I might say “recite these lyrics as a monologue using expression and natural pauses. Make sure you can put accents on certain words, experiment with gestures and facial expressions, play with dynamic changes. You should practice it 3 different ways each time you practice.” Perhaps providing a learning goal and success criteria for each step of learning a song, or what it looks like to correctly practice a technical exercise. Growing up, a similar method might have motivated me to practice singing more, and more efficiently too. I would have gone into a lesson more confident and even if I didn’t practice enough, I would have at least had an idea of what we were going to focus on during my lesson. My students would most likely have benefited the same, and I intend to implement this when I open a private studio in the (hopefully soon) future. 

Being transparent with the purpose of a task and the criteria to be successful gives students the road map to their learning. They are most likely to meet you along the way if the know the path to follow.

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Using Props as a Writing Prompt

Creative Writing in the Classroom: 

Quick Writing to Short Story Publishing

Last week my associate teacher was explaining a writing activity she has carried through her classes over the past 5 years, inspired from a technical fluke of her Halloween classroom decorations. She had an inflatable lawn ornament of a cat that she brought into the classroom and set up the week before Halloween. The students loved the big cat in their classroom, and gave it a name (I think Cookie was their consensus).

One day she plugged it in, and for some reason, it inflated in a way that legs of the cat were awkwardly up in the air. The students shuffled into class, and started to laugh at Cookie’s position, asking the teacher what happened to him. Inspired by her student’s questions, my associate teacher used their engagement for her unplanned opening activity for the day. She asked the students to take out their language journals and to write what Cookie had done to get into that position. The students eagerly wrote creative scenarios about the cat chasing a mouse and how the mouse had outsmarted him, or that Cookie was a secret agent sleuthing through the students’ desks and was trying not to get caught when the students came in. Delighted by the response, the teacher would place Cookie in odd places or positions before the students came into the classroom and then the students would start their day writing a short reason behind his position.

What an exciting way to engage students to begin creative writing! By using a prop and a guiding question, students are given a focused channel for their creativity. Journaling gives them a space to write their ideas freely and keep track of their ideas for later reflection or developing. My associate teacher used this as a quick writing exercise for students to practice their creative writing, but the activity could easily be developed into a lesson unit on the creative writing process.

Using Props as Prompts

Writing prompts are key to help students inspire and focus their creative ideas onto the blank page in front of them. Introducing a physical prop or character provides them with a concrete item to build a foundation on, and work from that point. In my associate teacher’s case, she introduced a cat character, Cookie, as the focus of her students' creativity.

Any character prop could work just as well. Similar to the Elf of the Shelf idea parents practice each December, the teacher could manipulate the character into different positions or places around the classroom or in the school. Once the class has all seen the new change in the character, students should be given time to creatively write how the said character got into that there. I personally would do this activity as a quick write, where the grammar and spelling didn’t matter, but shift the focus towards creative thinking. This could be done in a language journal, google document or on a digital classroom forum. Students could include pictures, or create audio files, depending on their preferred style of learning or differentiation needed, as long as the creative ideas are recorded.

Quick Writes to Short Story

Writers rarely just sit and write from a blank screen at a Starbucks for hours, producing page after page of a story. Usually writers plan out their characters, their settings, and their plot long before the actual writing begins. Teachers can easily use a Character Prop, as well as quick write stories to cultivate these development skills.

After a determined period of time, students should have a nice collection of creative ideas in which to create a story. Students should be encouraged to review their ideas and to develop a plot for a short story based on one or more ideas they had. At this point, mini lessons discussing plot diagrams and features of a good short story could be introduced.

To help students develop a plot, a graphic organizer or digital tool could be used. BBC has a really awesome tool called PinBall in which the user can manipulate ideas, images or words, either generated by the program and imputed by the user, in various ways. There is the option of a mind map, a timeline, an idea sorter, and an image manipulator. For an fun extra activity, this MadLibs-style story generator would be an interesting prompting tool.   

This method could then be transitioned towards the details of a story, like character and setting development. After the plot outline is complete or even during the quick write period, give students a graphic organizer in which to determine the details about the prop character. Discuss character traits, descriptions, likes and dislikes, relationships and goals. Ask them to draw a picture of the character on the graphic organizer, or could be included as a task for Visual Art class. Once students have their plot outlined, students could create a character profile for each main character. Students could be tasked to do the same for certain settings in their story.

Writing the Story

Now that they have the plot outline, the characters developed, and the settings organized, students are ready to start writing their first draft. This can be done again by using a graphic organizer for each plot point, or students can be given free range to write. Students should be able to write on paper or on a word processing software. Provide time for students to write in class, as well as give them checkpoints for each draft. 2-3 drafts should be submitted before the final product is complete. No grade should be assigned to any of the drafts, but should be covered with lots of descriptive feedback.

In order to avoid overwhelming students with negative feedback, find an editing focus for each draft.

For the first draft… Focus on the organization of the story, the descriptions and if things need to be clarified. Provide suggestions or questions to prompt expansion of an idea or an alternative solution. Only edit major formatting or phrasing errors.

For the second draft… Focus on the finer details, like formatting or grammar. Correct glaring spelling mistakes. Avoid over correcting, keeping the focus primarily on plot and formatting details.

For the third draft… Now is the time to focus on all the spelling and grammatical errors. They should be ready to publish their story, and this should be more of a proof reading stage. This can also be done through peer editing or on Grammerly.

Publishing

Now the fun part! There are lots of ways students can publish their stories. Teachers can assign one specific way of publishing or offer a few options students can choose from. They could be published in a hard copy or digitally.

"Tyla's Spell",
4 chapter short story, circa 2003
by 12 year old Mrs. Day

Long ago, in my Grade Seven class, (yikes, 13 years ago!), I wrote a short story about a fairy who needed help by some children during Halloween. I drew pictures above my text and created a picture book by putting the pages into a small binder. We later read our stories to our reading buddies in a Grade One class. Technology would have been an interesting way to publish my story though, and maybe the graphics would have been better than my poor illustration skills. Maybe I'll upload the story here using one of the options below.

Some digital publishing options include:

GoogleSlides, PowerPoint or Slide Story- Each slide could be a section of the story with images. Students could also record their voices reading out the story on each slide.

Flipsnack – create a flipbook of pdfs

StoryBird – create a short picture book based on a selection of images

Comic Master or Storyboard That – create a graphic novel by clicking and dragging items, and adding text

Storytop or StoryJumper – create a scene by scene story, by adding text to backgrounds and images

PowToons – create an animated video with sounds, images and text

Final Consolidation

Students should then share their creations with the class, other classes in their division, to younger grades, or create a digital portfolio of all their hard work. Students could create a blog, Prezi, or RealTime Board showing off their creative writing process. They could post a few of their quick write samples, or their character and setting outlines. A video trailer for the plot outline could be created. At the end, the final project should be presented. Students could also post a reflective paragraph, audio or video file explaining their process.

There are so many cross curricular and unit expansions that could develop from a simple prop placed in an interesting position in the classroom. The activity could be modified towards a small journal entry, or to an entire unit lasting a few weeks. Students have lots of ideas. They sometimes just need some unique inspiration.

Happy Planning!

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Benchmark Angles

What do you call an angle which is adorable? 

Acutie pie!

What do you call a stubborn angle? 

Obtuse!

Why was the obtuse angle upset? 

Because he was never right!

Why did the obtuse angle go to the beach? 

Because it was over 90 degrees!

Last one, I promise!

Seriously though, geometry has the best puns, especially for angles. Not only are they funny, but they can help students remember key features about types of triangles and angles. I particularly like the last three jokes, as they really enforce the idea of a right angle being 90 degrees, and an obtuse angle is more than 90 degrees. Such an important concept and yet, such a simple way to engage students.

In my placement class, certain students are still struggling to grasp the concept of benchmark angles. Benchmark angles are the main angles that one can use to eyeball approximate angles. They are the starting points of angle estimation.

Benchmark angles also help students develop an understanding of angle size. At first, students describe angles qualitatively (less than a right angle, greater than a straight angle); eventually they use a numerical value (“The angle is a little smaller than a right angle, so it’s about 80°”). - Geometry and Spatial Sense, pg 41

The first and most important benchmark is a right angle, or a 90° angle. It looks like an L. Some non-standard tools to help students recognize a right angle is the corner of a piece of paper, the corner of a book, the placement of the hour and minute hand on a clock at 3 pm. An easy tool they always have with them is their hands. If they make an L shape with their thumb and pointer finger, this creates a right angle.

Once they understand the what a right angle looks like, and that it is 90°, they can begin to learn the other benchmarks (45°, 135°, 180°). An simple activity to help students understand the relationship between recognizing benchmark angles and the types of angles is to practice identifying obtuse and acute angles without the use of a protractor. Obtuse angles extend more than 90°, and Acute angles are smaller than a 90°. It was surprising how many students in my placement struggled with this.

An activity that my associate teacher did with her class was to take the students outside, and they recorded and investigated angles and polygons. They looked for right angles, found acute angles on leaves and identified obtuse angles on rocks. Students were engaged and actively looking for different types of angles and shapes around the yard. Some brought back some leaves, and they measured the exact angles with protractors, without being prompted!

Benchmarks are important for students to recognize, especially right angles, so when they start learning about perpendicular lines, they are able to identify the right angle quickly. My grade seven students who hadn’t quite grasped the concept then ran into problems when trying to identify a perpendicular line segment.

I leave you with this fun song!

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Resource Review: Making Music Count

Striking Gold with Resources

This week I found something really, really cool that I would like to share with you. I have already mentioned in my first post about how math always confused me, and even though I am musically inclined, I struggled with music theory as well. But what if you could learn them together and explicitly see the relationship between them without having to do a lot of inference? Maybe that would have helped me make the connections I somehow missed.

In practicum yesterday, I observed an awesome grade 4/5 music lesson. As part of it, we were singing a song that was very similar to the Christmas carol, “Angels We Have Heard on High”. The music book pointed out in a footnote to notice the translated pattern in the melody of “gloria”.

As you probably know, the word “gloria” is sung to a melisma comprised of a series of notes repeated 3 times, each time one whole tone lower. Okay, not everyone understands it in those terms, but you probably realize there is a repeated pattern in notes and rhythm. The idea of patterning in music stayed with me when I started to think of what to blog about this week, so it was a natural inclination to decide to research how to teach patterns and algebra with music.

However, I was disappointed. I spend almost 6 hours researching, and while I found countless articles and studies alluding and supporting a link to music and algebra, I found little actual lesson plans or activities to actually teach the link. I found a few activities for patterning and music, but much of it was suited for primary curriculum. Anything else I found was for high school algebra or really complicated university level math. Why couldn’t I find anything for middle school algebra that was comprehensive yet easy to teach? I almost gave up to write a boring blog post on a text book activity. They always say it looks darkest before dawn, and today I rung true. I finally struck gold and came across an innovative program that is quickly becoming a prevalent method of teaching algebra and music.

Make Music Count

Image Source

Mathematician and pianist Marcus Blackwell Jr. discovered how he had learnt to play the piano by ear by constructing the pitch relationships in mathematical terms. Using this euphony, he has created an entire curriculum using algebra to teach musical pitches and chords to current pop songs by artists like Justin Timberlake and Taylor Swift. He likens a scale on piano keys to a number line. After explaining the relationship between a semitone and whole tone, students practice figuring out the relationship of note a to note b. For example, a whole tone is 1 step in pitch. So D natural is 1 step/whole tone away from E, and one whole tone away from C. To figure this out, students are encouraged to use the piano scale/number line to find the related pitch. This can be put into an equation such as D + 1 = E, or D – 1 = C. Once this is concept is established, students can then find out the new note that is 2 or 3 whole tones away from D. Then comes the algebra. In order to find the first chord to a selected song, the student has to figure out the whole tone amount (the variable) towards each pitch. To do this, students are given x = 2. They must substitute the variable to find the note in the chord. Once they have figured this out, they have the chord. After doing this 3-5 times, they have the basic chords for a full pop song (honestly, you can play so many pop songs with a limited amount of basic chord progressions it’s laughable).

By reading articles, watching videos, and combing the website, all I can really pull out concretely without reading the actual workbooks is using the musical scale to represent and describe relationships between numbers, which can be useful to explain adding and subtraction, but also as a tool to introduce functions. In Making Math Meaningful, Small defines a function as “a relationship that leads to a particular output for a particular input”. In the Make Music Count program, the function would be +/- (# of whole tones) = (Pitch). The input would be the number of whole tones, labeled x, and the output with be the note/pitch. From the demos I have found, students practice substituting a given number into the input variable to find the pitches.

Make Music Count - Lesson 3 from Jarvis Addison on Vimeo.

Christmas List

I have asked for these work books for Christmas and am extremely excited to get to the details and extensions this program offers. Looking at their store, they also have a book on graphing and one on fractions. Needless to say, it’s a creative and exciting way to math, and as a reward for using math, students learn music. Can’t get much better than that!

Stay tuned for after Christmas for another post describing this program in detail. Has anyone used this program in their school? Can you explain how it works a little more deeply? Let us know in the comments!

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Literacy: Reading

I’m a Nerd and so is my Husband

As a wedding present, my husband and I were given the recent installment to the iconic Harry Potter series, The Cursed Child, a screenplay inspired from the original story. Before school, we decided to wait to buy and read it because we were focused on the wedding, and after the wedding, when we received the book, we were so focused on school we hadn’t had a chance to start. This weekend the temptation was too strong, and I started reading to pass the time while at work (I am lucky to have a job that lets me read on the clock). I finished it Saturday night, and gave it to my husband to have his turn to read. On Sunday, after my morning shift, he met me at the restaurant I work and we had some lunch. He proudly stated that he finished the book that morning! After expressing how impressive his speed reading skills were, we quickly divulged into an hour long discussion of our reception to the book as it’s own entity and how it related to the series as a whole. We focused on the overall plot, what we liked and what might have been a better direction. My husband brought up implications that clashed with other knowledge he had gained about (spoiler alert) time travel concepts from other sources, and I highlighted the misrepresentations of certain characters and the overall cathartic scenes that I really enjoyed. We debated the social connotations and reflections of our society to theirs, and compared it to the change from the society in the first books (20 years prior to the current installment) and our own world views that have changed over 20 years. We then talked about how it might be translated onto the physical stage, and how we liked or were confused with certain elements of the Potterverse and how it was interpreted into a new medium.

Basically, what my husband and I did during our lunch was deepen our comprehension of our reading by sharing our thoughts and discussing the hidden inferences and details not explicitly outlined in the text. By doing this in depth discussion, both my husband and I have a better understand of what was said (and not said) in the story, and explored new ideas that we might not have uncovered individually (like the implications of time travel).

Which is why it is imperative that students have conversations about their readings in enhance their comprehension of the material. Conversations invite critical thinking, making connections, breed questions, and develop crucial dialogue skills of discussing text.

Conversation is a basis for critical thinking. It is the thread that ties together cognitive strategies and provides students with the practice that becomes the foundation for reading, writing, and thinking. - Ann Ketch

Conversations in the Classroom

Both my husband and I were a part of provincial-wide reading programs in our elementary school (Forest of Reading), which was essentially a book club for children. I remember in my school we had weekly meetings either during lunch or after school in the library with the other children in our age group that were involved and we would just talk about our book that week, guided by a facilitating teacher. Sometimes we just read in the time period, sometimes we had discussions. The wonderful part about the experience was it made us both learn at an early age that reading was more than a solidary endeavor and developed our ability to identify key concepts in our readings, make connections with our personal experiences and how to talk about them effectively. It also exposed us to a variety of genres and styles of writing which not only allowed us to discover and identify our reading preferences, but also impacted our writing skills. By reading all types of genres, we were able to emulate the benefits of each style into our writing, allowing it to develop into a well-rounded craft.

But why keep a book club just as an extracurricular experience? Why not bring those benefits right into the classroom? Book clubs not only prompt conversation and deeper thinking about the reading, but bring with it a sense of community, development of respect to alternative opinions and perspectives, and build confidence in expressing and reflecting on one’s thoughts in a group. All these benefits can not only improve student engagement towards reading, but carry over to all aspects of the classroom.

Starting a Book Club in your Class

We’ve discussed the benefits of a book club, and can see the advantages it can give students. Starting one in the classroom is an fun method to focus silent reading time, increase student engagement and differentiate towards each level of learner. This article introduces some steps that will help start a book club in your classroom. Below I have also outlined some ideas.

First Session:

I would start by creating “meeting groups” based on ability. These groups should be no bigger than 5 students. This is a great way to differentiate for each targeted need of your students. In the first meeting, let the students create a group name, and an outline for meeting expectations. The expectations can be developed by group or by the class as a whole, but should be designed by the students. For the first session, I would assign a book for each group targeted towards their appropriate challenge level and a “bookmark goal” for the next meeting (read a chapter, to a certain a page number, or to finish the entire book). I would then give them a few specific questions to consider while reading. Students would be expected to read their book during silent reading time. In order to help the discussion for the next session, each day they could journal about what they read, or you could pose a general question that they need to journal about. They could also use a graphic organizer or tracker for their daily reading thoughts.

Second Session:

A week (or whatever time period decided on) later, have the second session. Each student should be encouraged to talk briefly about one thought they had about the selected reading. Prompts could be quotes they liked, characters that stood out to them, events that happened that they thought were interesting, things they found boring or offending etc. Once students have gotten their initial opinions expressed, then the prompting questions can begin. They should be thought provoking questions, asking students why things unfolded they way they did, “what if” questions, and most importantly, how the reading connected to something in their own experiences. If time, close with an physical activity (like a craft or game), and/or pose a new question for students to think about while reading the next section/book.

Next Sessions

Once a book is completed, you can assign a new book, or give students a selected reading list that they are allowed to choose from. Each student can select one book they want to the group to read (based on the summary of the book) and groups can cycle through each. As the routine is established, you may allow students to suggest their own books for the next reading (approved by the teacher).

More Activities to Enrich Conversations:

Below are some activities inspired from here, here and here.

Ask each student to develop a discussion question for the group, setting clear expectations of what a good discussion question looks like.

Have students fill out a graphic organizer during the discussion to paste into a journal for record of ideas.

Include external information about the author or time period, book sales, it's role in a series, a genre study etc.

Give each group member a reading role. Each member reads the next session focusing or looking for a specific concept (character development, themes, words, connections to society/history/real life, an illustration of a key scene).

Host a Share with Parents or Reading Fair. Work towards creating a poster board for each book finished, expressing big ideas or evidence of deep thinking, good questions, themes, illustrations, connections etc. that students can share with parents and peers based on their group conversations.

Create a deck of “prompt cards” that students can shuffle and randomly select as journal entry responses or guiding questions for discussion. Or use popsicle sticks.

Guiding Question bookmarks.

If a spark of excitement towards reading and sharing is all that comes from a class book club, I still see a benefit for all students.

Now I want to start or join an adult book club too!

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A Tale of Two Educations

Little Bit About Me

Growing up, I was fortunate enough to experience two types of education. I went to a school like every other kid and was formally taught my ABC’s and numbers, but during kindergarten, I also began piano lessons, where I learnt my do-re-mi’s and how to read music. I eventually dropped piano lessons when I was 12, focusing on the singing lessons I started to take when I was 9. I would continue to receive both types of education simultaneously until I graduated university. Yes, even in my undergrad, I received voice lessons from my professor 4 days a week along side my academic classes. 

Were They Different?

Both experiences were different, yet similar. Obviously I didn’t go to a teacher every day like I did in formal school, but I went every week. I had learning goals for each week like I would in formal schooling, and at the end of the year, I would receive a few grades.

The biggest difference besides the formal vs informal setting was how I was assessed. In school, I was assessed by tests and essays with grades frequently. In lessons, I was given constant feedback and when I went home, I would practice and monitor my success, then go back to my teacher the next week, and receive more feedback based on my progress. The cycle was recursive of formative assessment and self reflection, or assessment for learning and assessment as learning. I would receive a summative mark towards my progress in competition and exams at the end of the year.

Because of my year long cycle filled with feedback and self reflection, I would look at the grades after my competition as an afterthought. I wanted to read the feedback notes. What did I do well, what could I improve on, was there strategies listed to help my success? In my lesson, my teacher and I would then discuss and reflect back on the competition in relation to the feedback, and I would ALWAYS improve based on that feedback. Every other year or so, I would work towards a graded exam for singing. I would learn repertoire, exercises, skills all year, and then be tested in June to see how well I learned the skills in order to move on to the next grade. When I received my final grade, it was usually a reflection of what I already knew were my strengths and weaknesses because of all the feedback I received throughout the year. It was similar in university. My teacher and I would spend a couple semesters exchanging feedback and reflection, and when I was given a final grade for year, I already knew the reasons why it was accessed as such.

Self-esteem and Grades

Now, this alternative education didn’t fully change the way I looked at grades in my formal schooling. I still cared about what grade I was given, and I was devastated when I received a bad mark. But at the same time, my music education influenced my evaluation of how I interpreted my self esteem based on my grade. Having the constant cycle of feedback and reflection towards gradual goals allowed me to understand what personal growth really meant, and reinforced a growth mindset which translated over to my reaction to grades. Yes, I wanted to do well, but I didn’t care how my grade was compared to everyone else’s. I was trying to either beat my previous grade or at least maintain it.

I also had a better understanding of realistic expectations of my grade meant in terms of my strengths and weaknesses. While an 80% essay might be a good grade compared to the average in the class, to me that was a not so great grade. I knew I was capable of much higher. However, when I would receive a 68% in a math assignment, I would be okay with that when I usually received low 60’s and 50’s. I based my esteem on how I was growing as a learner, and not what that grade meant based on the average.

Music lessons really helped change my mindset towards what assessment means and is something I would like to add to my future students’ experience.

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