Two DOE-designed tools for reflecting on your music program

The first is a 27-page .pdf file of another colorful and beautifully-designed DOE document that teachers and administrators and others can use to reflect on the practice of teaching and learning music in their schools (click the picture to download it). This link is to the Music Reflection Tool for elementary schools, but there are equivalents for upper grades as well.

It’s organized into four areas:

1. Organizational Practice: School Environment: including the school’s physical resources/space, staff/instructional time, teacher support, arts data use
2. Instructional Practice: curriculum, teaching and learning
3. Student Outcomes: student engagement, demonstrated arts skills, knowledge and understanding
4. Arts & Cultural Service Providers: school’s use of in-school residencies, exhibitions and performances

The Music Reflection Tool is made available for your download and perusal from the Office of Arts & Special Projects webpages, where you can also download the Blueprint for Teaching & Learning in Music, and learn about upcoming professional development events.

Also available at the O.A.S.P. site is a similar document, Viewing, Assessing, and Supporting Effective Arts Instruction that provides checklists and rubrics of what arts instruction should look like (click the picture to download it as a .pdf file).

It includes four pages specifically on music instruction, noting the kinds of things that should be evident to anyone looking at the lesson plan, or observing the students or the teacher. Each page states in bold type that “throughout the study of a piece of music, connections to all five strands of the Blueprint should be made, thus informing students’ understanding and performance of the repertoire.”