Assessment and Instructional Design

This week's reading focused on assessment and instructional design.  I was comforted to see that I employ many of the assessment and instructional strategies in my classroom already, just never used the official educational title (ex: authentic assessment or backward design).  However, there were two things in particular that came out of the reading this week that I would like to explore.

First, I would like to look into implementing working portfolios in my ensemble classes.  As I was saying in a previous post, I see a tremendous amount of growth in my singers throughout the year.  They often come into my class singing timidly with only basic musical knowledge.  By the end of the year, they most often leave more confident, mature singers with a much larger knowledge base as a result of all their hard work.  I get the privilege of watching this growth throughout the year and experiencing it from an outside perspective.  They, however, do not get as much opportunity to really examine and reflect on their own growth.  By implementing portfolios, students can track their own progress, both individually and as an ensemble.  Keeping a more "official" record of their progress throughout the year will not only help them reflect, but will also give them confidence that their hard work is paying off!  I am hopeful that it will also make my SLO for my teacher evaluation more useful and meaningful.  In a perfect world, I would love to see my seniors create a presentation portfolio that shows their growth over the number of years they were in choir.  I think it would be extremely worthwhile to look back on where they started and reflect on how far they have come.  I am sure it would add much more meaning to their experience as well.

Next, I am interested in looking further into Driscoll's constructivism model.  According to Bauer, "Driscoll (2002) describes learning as contextual, active, social, and reflective" (2014, p. 147).  I think I concentrate a lot on the contextual piece.  In our district, we are constantly assessing students' prior knowledge through pre-tests and using the data as a way to track student growth.  I also believe there is a huge amount of active learning in my classroom.  Students have to synthesize all of their musical knowledge and use it to accurately perform a piece of music.  This is not something I can do for them.  They must take the time to sit, focus, and put in the practice time.  In my general music classes (piano and guitar),  I am often a facilitator during this time, making my way around the classroom answering questions, modeling sections of music, correcting mistakes, and asking them to explain and demonstrate expressive aspects of the piece (dynamics, tempo, articulation, etc).  In my ensembles, I facilitate conversation between students about concepts such as tone, intonation, balance, blend, and expression-all concepts the students need to work as a team to successfully perform.  I believe active learning is something that comes very naturally in the music classroom.  However, I would like to brainstorm ways to bring in the social and reflective elements more often in my classroom.  I often have students practice in groups in my general music classes, using student models as group leaders.  I also often have students write about their performance in order to reflect on the things they did will and where they need to improve.  However, I think I can extend the social and reflective aspects of class beyond the classroom through the use of technology.  I would love to see if I can incorporate blogging into my classroom through the use of a class website.  This way, students can be reflective while sharing their ideas with the entire class instead of just handing in a piece of paper to me at the end of the class period.  This could really enhance musical dialogue and active use of their learning throughout the semester.  

Both portfolios and web-based social reflection are exciting ideas.  With excitement comes a little bit of anxiety because I do feel it will really stretch me beyond what I have implemented in a classroom so far.  But, I am excited to learn and grow with my students as I continue to try to include technology into my curriculum!