A Musician’s Case Against Narrowing the Curriculum

1. A Musician’s Case Against Narrowing the Curriculum Steve Williams, Fine Arts Consultant MO Dept. of Elem. and Secondary Education

2. A May 2005 Harris Poll on the attitudes of Americans toward arts education found:

3. Furthermore…

4. 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

5. 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)

6. 2007 NAEP Results

7. 2007 NAEP Results

8. Missouri Data

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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/align_ca_rpt_final_06.pdf

13. 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

14. 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.

15. 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

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. Eliciting Useful Student Feedback • Questioning is necessary to formatively assess student understanding • Often students who don’t understand will not volunteer • Learning that a small minority of students “get it” is not a sufficient factor in deciding to move on • Don’t ask for comprehension, check for it

24. 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?

25. 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

26. 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?

27. Singing in General Music • A child’s 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

28. CA Reading 1B:Phonemic 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

29. 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

30. 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.

31. How the Eye Moves

32. CA Reading 1D:Fluency • 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.

33. 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

34. CA Reading 1F:Pre-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

35. 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. When We Have to Write…

36. 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

37. 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.

38. 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.

39. Using 6 Traits to Assess

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

41. 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.

42. 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/

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

44. Thank You! Steve Williams, Fine Arts Consultant MO Department of Education Ph: (573) 751-2857 E-mail: steve.williams@dese.mo.gov