Little Johnny Brown
“Little Johnny Brown” is an extraordinary African-American singing game, with lots of call and response, group interaction with the individual players, and opportunities for invention and improvisation.
Doug Goodkin, who is one of the top Orff educators and clinicians in the U.S., has this excellent introduction to “Little Johnny Brown” on his website. It’s a PDF file with images, a small score and discussion.
And some video segments are available: a recent performance and the older version seen on YouTube (above) led by the Georgia Sea Islands singer, teacher and author Bessie Jones.
About E.S.M.
Elementary School Music: This site is just a means of compiling and sharing some information and web resources for the convenience of people who teach music in New York City’s elementary schools. Clicking on one of the “categories” listed on the right will take you to the links and information.
Technically-speaking, what you’re looking at is a “blog.” However, this isn’t someone’s personal diary about teaching. Elementary School Music is primarily a collection point for information and resources — which is open to inquiries and exchange of ideas by music teachers.
Some visitors may take a moment to submit material or seek advice by “posting” a comment on one of the pages or by sending an e-mail.
- encounter dead links
- see something that needs correcting
- wish to submit content
- you found something useful
please post a comment on the relevant page.
About the compiler: “Since 2000, I’ve taught general music pre-K to 5th grade, at a small school in Region 8 near the Gowanus Expressway in Park Slope. Students come to school with extensive experience as consumers of entertainment — music, video and digital games. In teaching I try to develop their abilities and awareness as producers of music, meaning the sounds should come from them. We don’t listen to CDs of Mozart or Ellington (or Ella Jenkins) as often as I think we should. But we have a lot of singing, playing, moving, and basic music literacy.”
— Pablo Conrad
Music Education Standards in New York City
Below are links and descriptions of the following:
- National Standards for Music Education
- NY State Arts Standards for Music
- NYC Blueprint for Teaching & Learning in the Arts
For NBPTS standards for teachers, see the Professional Development page.
About the Standards
National Standards for Music Education
1. Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
2. Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
3. Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments.
4. Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines.
5. Reading and notating music.
6. Listening to, analyzing, and describing music.
7. Evaluating music and music performances.
8. Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, & disciplines outside the arts.
9. Understanding music in relation to history and culture.
. . . That first item brings to mind a wonderful image: a young person who is “singing, alone and with others.” The existing National Standards for the Arts, New York State standards for the arts, and the NYC Department of Education’s “Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts” are all based on a single very important notion: that every child has the right to a rich, complete education, regardless of his or her race, or social class, or sex, or ability. They are written in an effort to guarantee this right, so it won’t be overlooked as city and state school systems organize their budgets and educational programs.
They’re directly useful for almost everyone involved: even with their tortured academic language, our national and state standards and the NYC Blueprint provide teachers with valuable reference points and opportunities for thinking about what we do each day. Yet two questions keep nagging if you actually sit and read (or skim through) these documents: who wrote this stuff? and then, in what school did they envision all of this activity taking place?
“Accountability” is a favorite word in a lot of current writing on education. Balanced literacy calls for kids to engage in accountable talk, and schools, supervisors, and teachers are meant to be accountable for what children learn — or what they don’t. (The current mania for high-stakes testing is a symptom of this: education policy is being shaped by people trained in law and business administration, so the numerical data can take on a nearly mystical importance.) The standards help establish exactly what is expected of everyone.
Standards emphasize two basic curriculum categories: content (meaning what will be presented to the learners) and achievement (meaning what the learner will know and be able to do as a result). The NYC Blueprint calls these “subject-based curricula” and “outcome-based curricula.” Performance standards (or benchmarks) specify the abilities a child can be expected to achieve at the end of a predetermined course of study.
Below are links to some of the documents that make up our national and NY State arts standards as they affect the teaching of music in pre-kindergarten through 4th or 5th grades. In some cases, detailed descriptions of the standards can be downloaded as PDF files and printed out.
National Standards for Music Education
NYC Blueprint for Teaching & Learning in Music
New York State Department of Education’s “Standards for Arts Education” as they apply to music are linked below:
The National Standards
The complete national standards in music (PreK-12) are available as a 48-page softcover book, The School Music Program: A New Vision (MENC, 1994). ISBN 1-56545-039-6 ($19.00). Or you can read them online at the MENC site. They include the following:
Opportunity-to-Learn Standards for Music Instruction: Grades PreK-12
Opportunity-to-Learn Standards are like a recipe for some professionals’ idea of the ideal learning environment. They are “intended to specify the physical and educational conditions necessary in the schools to enable every student, with sufficient effort, to meet the voluntary national content and achievement standards in music.” Here are wonderful lists of instruments and audio equipment, and measures of how often and for how long classes ought to meet. (The OTL also contains the seeds of the NYC Blueprint: one line reads: “The music curriculum is described and outlined in a series of sequential and articulated curriculum guides for each grade level.”)
Performance standards will be more familiar to people who witnessed the widespread use of New York State’s ELA and Math Standards in 1999. A single student response (or performance) can be keyed to a particular standard, to show where it reflects that bit of curriculum. Here’s where teachers can find specific assessment activities for measuring a child’s abilities, with reference to each standard, at any of three levels: “Basic,” “Proficient,” or “Advanced,” depending on how consistently the child can keep a steady beat, or identify different musical genres (for example).
New York State Arts Standards
There are four Arts Standards designated by New York State Department of Education. Each link below is for the relevant standard as it applies to teaching and learning about music:
2. Knowing & Using Arts Materials & Resources
3. Responding to and Analyzing Works of Art
4. Understanding Cultural Dimensions and Contributions of the Arts
The Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts
The Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts:
New York City’s Arts Blueprint is a somewhat different kind of document, built around an awareness that “the diversity of art forms, cultures, settings, and practices that entice visitors from around the world are available every day to our City’s youth.” The Blueprint goes beyond the national and NYS standards, by conceiving of relevant learnings that are common to all the fine arts. It is the product of a collaboration between the Department of Education and members of the “New York cultural community” — arts organizations such as the New York Philharmonic. Teaching and learning of dance, drama, visual arts, and music is organized into five “strands.” The descriptions that follow are quoted directly from the Blueprint.
I. Arts Making
The arts-making strands indicate what students should be able to accomplish at the end of benchmark years: second, fifth, eighth, and twelfth grades. These charts provide “snapshots” of the learning process—the skills, knowledge, and appreciation that should be mastered in selected areas and how these are honed as students mature.
II. Literacy in the Arts
Each of the arts has its own vocabulary and literacy, as well as its own set of skills that support learning across the curriculum. For example, although musical notation is a language all its own, a student who develops skills in reading musical notation is at the same time developing skills useful to learning reading. Similarly, the careful observation of a work of art resembles the close reading of a text—one that includes making observations and drawing inferences. More generally, the arts provide students with inexhaustible subjects about which they may read and write, as well as engage in accountable talk.
III. Making Connections
This strand provides social, cultural, and historical contexts in which students may understand the arts, while indicating some of the links to other disciplines in the curriculum. Students are expected to apply knowledge and skills learned in the arts to assist them in interpreting the world around them.
IV. Community and Cultural Resources
New York City is rich in community and cultural resources. Students should be actively engaged with the institutions, schools, studios, community-based organizations, libraries, concerts, exhibitions, and artists that contribute to the cultural and economic vitality of the City. These resources are integral to the development of young artists and musicians, expanding their horizons and enhancing the instruction they receive in school.
V. Careers and Life-long Learning
While some students will pursue careers in arts-related fields, most will regard the arts as a means of expression and a source of life-long enjoyment. The career-building skills learned in arts activities are those required in all other fields of endeavor: goals setting, planning, and working independently and in teams.
