Student Performances
The TimeOut/MakeMusicNY festival of public music performances is held each year on June 21 all across the city, and it offers a great opportunity for young performers to appear before an audience that’s greater than the school community. (June 21st is the summer solstice, and the same day over 300 cities around the world celebrate their own “Make Music” / Fete de la Musique days.)
A participating school can arrange to have a stage set-up outdoors on a shopping strip near the school where a chorus or music ensemble could perform in a regular program. Obviously, it takes careful planning to bring your students and their families together for the specified time-slot on the day of performance, but the pay-off is huge: kids get some real-world experience as performers.
To register or inquire about the Monday June 21, 2010 Festival visit the MakeMusicNY site.
Music Technology
Music technology applications in elementary school can include notation software, software for learning, and the hardware and software used to record and reproduce children’s musical performances.
Notation Software
Various companies make software for music composition and notation, that allow users to print and share professional-looking charts or song sheets.
Recording
Recording children’s singing or musical performance can be a powerful teaching tool. There are basically three ways to do this:
- use an old-fashioned cassette player/recorder with a microphone.
- use a digital recorder such as a mini-disk or hard-drive audio recorder, with an external microphone or one that’s built in.
- use a classroom computer or laptop with appropriate software, such as an i-Mac with Garageband.
Garageband is Apple’s software that allows users to record and produce a song, using either live instruments and voices or by combining pre-recorded “loops” of various instrumental sounds in a layered composition. Quality is good, ease of use is not-so-good.
Garageband is part of the standard “i-Life” package of software on Mac computers found in many schools. Since these classroom desktops and laptops have built-in microphones, teachers willing to spend some time exploring and learning have the ability to record student performances and even burn a CD or post the performance on a school website. However, the basic functions require a little patient study. The Apple store in Manhattan offers free classes in using Garageband.
Audacity is a free download: “Simple but powerful software for multi-track editing and recording.”
Users can record from microphone, mixers, cassettes, records, minidiscs, FM radio, or import sound files, edit them and mix with other files or new recordings. Finished projects can be exported to various file formats including WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP3 (with optional LAME library), AAC (import only). Here’s a Guide to Installation for Windows users.
Learning Software
The choices for software that supports music learning are extensive. There is some question whether time spent interacting with a computer is as valuable as time spent singing or playing music or listening to recordings or live performances. One exception may be the Clearvue line of music appreciation DVDs, CDs and videos.
MusicAce by Harmonic Vision.
Juilliard Music Adventure (Rhythm & Melody) by Tom Snyder.
Essentials of Music Theory by Alfred Publishing.
GNU Solfege is a free software program written to help people do ear training: it includes exercises to train chords, intervals, scales, rhythms and harmonic progressions.
Using a SmartBoard
If you have a music classroom and your school can afford around $1,800 for the equipment, it can be a powerful tool. There are loads of solutions for teaching music on an interactive whiteboard (orSmartBoard) at the “MusTech” Wiki
File-sharing
Downloading audio files from the so-called “peer-to-peer” networks such as Limewire and similar sites is illegal and represents an infringement of the rights of the artist whose song is acquired. ASCAP, the professional body that protects the rights of composers and publishers, has a strong position on the issue. With the Music Educators National Conference, ASCAP has developed a curriculum program (Creativity in the Classroom) to teach children about their own place in a creative community that includes creators, consumers and legal copyright.
According to ASCAP’s definition of fair use, there is no allowance for a teacher to download a file of a copyrighted song or reproduce lyric sheets for use in a classroom setting.
Resources
Music Education Technology is a magazine that offers free resources and lesson plans.
Technology Institute for Music Educators (TI:ME) has extensive web resources.
The NYC Department of Education has extensive resources to support instructional uses of technology. Contact your regional Office of Instructional Technology to learn about after-school technology professional development (some with per-session).
Teaching for Musical Understanding
This is the second edition of a 2001 academic book that emphasizes the constructivist approach to teaching — meaning the teacher steps out of the center of the classroom to create more opportunities for discovery by the students. This is an essential but immensely tricky aspect to teaching music with young students. 
Jackie Wiggins is a professor at Oakland University and author of Teaching for Musical Understanding which is just out in its second edition from McGraw-Hill. The book is discussed favorably on the Music Work blog. (Unfortunately, it’s hard to find in city libraries and few used copies are available at amazon.)
World Music Drumming workshop
On Saturday, March 6th, 2010 9AM-1PM (check for updates in January) the UFT Music Teachers Committee is hosting a workshop on “World Music Drumming: Transforming Lives — Building Community” led by Dr. Will Schmid.
This is a hands-on session demonstrating the World Music Drumming curriculum, which is designed for grades 3-5 and middle school / HS students. Participants should bring a hand drum if possible. The event is presented in conjunction with Hal Leonard Corp., publishers of Dr. Schmid’s World Music Drumming Curriculum.
The workshop is $10.00 with advance registration, $15.00 at the door and it includes pastry, fruit and coffee served at 8:30 AM. For advance registration, download a registration form from the UFT site and mail it in.
January Workshop
Kodaly Organization of New York (KONY) presents: Susan Brumfield: Saturday, January 30th
10am-2pm, Registration beginning at 9:30
KONY Members: $20, Non-Members: $30, Full-Time Student Members: $5, Full-Time Student Non-Members: $15
at Trevor Day School: 11 East 89th Street, Manhattan
Dr. Brumfield will lead two mini-workshops, and songs & singing games from England, Scotland and Italy plus a choral reading sponsored by Hal Leonard Publishing.
Brumfield teaches at Texas Tech and has edited two collections of traditional songs and games for children from the British Isles: Hot Peas and Barley-O: Children’s Songs and Games from Scotland (Hal Leonard), and Over the Garden Wall: Children’s Songs and Games from England (JW Pepper).
Arabic Songs for Children
This collection is the result of a 2003 research project in the Dearborn, Michigan, schools and most of the songs and games are Yemeni in origin. Priced at $40 plus shipping this package includes a CD, a book and a performance videocassette. Apart from the very short holiday song Al Eid ga’a, most songs have no specifically Muslim content.
It includes 15 songs with Arabic text, English translations and transliteration.
1. Hunak Tunak, a hand-game; 2. Malik Tibki, a choosing game; 3. Sha Sha Sha, a partner/friendship game; 4. Salam; Salam, a circle hand-clapping, elimination game; 5. Dakel Yadee Gowah, Arabic “Hokey-Pokey;” 6. Al Eid ga’a, holiday song; 7. Wahed Howa Rabi, a counting song; 8. Yabanat, Yabanat, a call-and-response game; 9. Al Tha’alab wa Addeek, a Yemeni song about the fox and the rooster; 10. Ya Watani, Ya Yemeni, a patriotic song for Yemeni children; 11. Dhahabal lailo, (The Night Is Over); 12. Aliph, bet, tet, Arabic alphabet song; 13. Eideq Ya Mama, song of devotion to mothers; 14. Rabat al bait, (Mother of the House); 15. Khulsit (Bye-bye).
It was compiled by Susan Snyder who has a lot of other valuable materials for music teachers at AE IDEAs (Inventive Designs for Education & the Arts) website, including the excellent Music Memory curriculum for teaching Western art music appreciation.
NYC DOE Resources
Teaching of music in NYC schools is supported and directed citywide by the The Office of the Arts and Special Projects, in the Department of Education’s headquarters in Tweed Courthouse on Chambers Street. Dr. Barbara Murray is the Director of Music Education.
The Office of the Arts and Special Projects is set up to support and enhance instructional programs in art, music, dance and theater, in grades preK-12. Each school receives a budget line for arts education based on pupil enrollment. How these funds are spent is determined by the school’s principal, in accordance with established guidelines. During the reorganization of the Department of Education, budgeting is a far more transparent process than it was in the past, and a great deal of information about how schools spend money is available publicly, on-line.
The OASP site is an on-line source for several critically-important documents:
the curriculum guide Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts (it’s a PDF file, heavy in color and graphics: not practical for downloading and printing). Note: The Blueprint “strands” on Music Education are also available in a more practical poster format (both are available for purchase; see below).
Getting the Blueprint:
Your school’s principal can order it through FAMIS: E-Catalog, search under the category “Internal Services” with the following item numbers:
TLAR10032- Music Blueprint Book- $7
TLAR10033- Music Blueprint Poster- $3
Include specific contact information on the purchase order for the delivery of materials. The necessary funds should be scheduled in Object Code 0998. For a free download of the Blueprint in a PDF file, click here.
The DOE’s brief Benchmarks for Music Learning can be examined online — a series of general statements that summarize expectations for children’s learning and abilities in grades 2, 5, 8 and 12.
In addition, the OASP page offers much valuable information on ArtsCount. This is the Department of Education’s program to ensure that arts education is not overlooked in the drive toward accountability in city schools (see post below). Components of this program include the Annual Arts in Schools Report, the Learning Environment Surveys, and Annual Compliance Review. Some of this information can be accessed on each school’s DOE-hosted website, if you click on the link to “Statistics” on the left column.
The OASP site offers links to many other valuable resources including grant sources and activities for students, including the Mr. Hollands’ Opus Foundation, and VH1’s Save the MusicFoundation.
Learning Support Organizations
Each school is associated with one of the School Support Organizations (SSO). Music teachers should seek to contact the arts coordinator for their school’s SSO, and to be aware of any workshops or other SSO initiatives to promote arts education.
“Blueprint 2.0″
In the spring of 2008 the Department of Education’s Office of Arts and Special Projects published a revised second edition of its Blueprint for Teaching & Learning in the Arts for music.
There’s a link for teachers to download the document as a .pdf file from the DOE website, but hundreds of printed copies were distributed to music teachers and principals when it was first published. A quick peek at the new Music Blueprint shows great improvements both in content and design. (Although the font sizes are still small, the new layout makes it much easier to use.)
The Blueprint is meant to guide the teaching of music across 14 years of early childhood and young adulthood, including college prep. It’s based on the idea that music cannot be taught in isolation from the rest of the curriculum, and that along with performance and aesthetic appreciation, teaching and learning of music must emphasize music’s role in our daily lives and communities, including the world of work. Nearly half the bulk of the new edition is comprised of material excerpted from another document that was distributed to music teachers several years ago, Music From the Inside Out: A Resource Guide for Music Teachers. This consists of extensive essays compiled by WNYC’s John Schaefer on music through history and around the world.There’s also a pretty extensive list of resources, including books and recordings as well as on-line materials.
Assessment
Since the Blueprint is a forward-looking document, this second edition is still an early stage in in its development. And this is made pretty clear early on, on page 9, in the introduction: “The new plan. . . will, as it evolves, provide clear and rigorous forms of assessment based on the best practices offered in the field.” The phrase “as it evolves” suggests that there is more work to be done. There are examples of “Wraparounds” — templates for planning lessons based on a piece of musical repertoire so as to include all five of the Blueprint strand. These pages do refer to assessment. However, evaluating learning outcomes is not dealt with very directly in this document.
The Blueprint is not the place to find a critical look at the fundamental problem faced by anyone who wants to make broad improvements in the teaching and learning of music in New York City’s public schools: scheduling and staffing are entirely up to the principals in each school, and these decisions are based on fluctuating enrollment and class sizes. Many schools cannot guarantee every child will have weekly music instruction throughout each of his or her seven years in elementary school. In some schools, one out of the four kindergarten classes will simply do without music; sometimes the whole fourth grade will have two science classes per week — at the expense of one weekly period for music. In addition, some New York City students change schools several times during their elementary careers.
Under these circumstances, consistent achievement (and assessments) for second and fifth graders throughout a given school, or across the whole city will be wildly impractical and difficult to ensure. Since the Blueprint document isn’t the place to address this problem, readers are left alone with the question: “What will my students learn, and how will I know they are learning it?”
Lesson Planning
Components of an elementary music curriculum or planbook:
- Single lessons
- “Units” or sequences of lessons
- Expected outcomes for the year (by age group or grade)
- Repertoire (performance, listening)
- Resources (available space, materials, time)
- Standards (The Blueprint)
- Assessments (rubrics, assessment formats)
In New York City schools, the first four components are typically determined by the teacher, working alone or with a mentor. Resources depend to a great extent on the physical plant, the budget, and above all on the awareness and commitment of the principal; these can vary widely from one school to another. The standards in place for music teachers in the Department of Education are represented by the Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts.
A good digest of the Blueprint can be found in the pages on “Hallmarks of a Good Music Lesson” in the Department of Education’s pamphlet Viewing, Assessing, and Supporting Effective Arts Instruction.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the Blueprint reflects an ideal. The Benchmarks it proposes are a practical guide only if the administration in a particular school can ensure continuity of resources from one school year to the next. In other words: the Blueprint and its benchmarks function at the mercy of decisions about scheduling, staffing, and classroom space (if any).
Another factor that complicates effective teaching and learning in city schools is the rate of “student mobility” (admissions and discharges during the school year) and “stability” (student longevity in the school). For obvious reasons, lesson planning for a highly unstable community requires a certain amount of flexibility.
Skilled planning for teaching elementary-grades music is similar to planning for math or emergent literacy: it involves an on-going sequential process that keeps children continually moving from the known to the unknown.
You can see excellent examples of how this process might unfold in practice by looking at one of the Kodály methodology introductions, in particular Lois Choksy’s The Kodály Method I and II (3rd edition, Prentice-Hall, 1999). Whether the Kodály approach is best-suited for conditions in NYC’s public schools may be debated. Basically, a Kodály program continually prepares children for explicit learning about each melodic or rhythmic concept with lots of experience in singing and playing musical games, so that the new concept has already been internalized, when it is presented. As a result, each lesson in a grade sequence has to include repertoire that can provide that preparation, as well as lots of opportunities for practice, in reading, writing and performing.
General Music Curriculum Framework Document
an interesting guide to planning by Prof. Debra Hadden, University of Kansas (MENC)
Into Music 4 is the music curriculum in the New Zealand Schools. A lot of interesting material can be found and downloaded from their website. Be prepared to explore and be prepared to “translate” into American terms.
Draw Me a Bucket of Water (Frog in a Bucket)
Here’s a nice little video on School Tube with students at a Knoxville, TN school demonstrating the game from Bessie Jones’ classic collection Step It Down: Games, Plays, Songs, and Stories from the Afro-American Heritage.
I never saw it end with that counted-down “dismount.” Usually the dancers turn one direction in a “bunch” and then loosen up and hold hands in a open circle of four so they can really fly around in the opposite direction (and maybe fall on the floor).
Draw Me a Bucket of Water (Georgia Sea Islands singing game)
Draw Me a Bucket of Water
Draw me a bucket of water
For my lady’s daughter
We got none [one, two, three, four] in the bunch
We’re all [three, two, one] out the bunch
You go under, sister Sally.
Frog in the bucket and I can’t get him out
Frog in the bucket and I can’t get him out
Frog in the bucket and I can’t get him out.
Frog in the bucket and I can’t get him out.
- Another site, KidMid, includes some instructions with solfege and rhythm notation. (more…)
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