Adam did not verbalize spontaneously, he was able to sing the words to the songs that we sang in class. Occasionally he preferred to sing the melody with a vowel sound only, rather than words. He often used that technique to “sing” along with instrumental examples as he followed maps of pieces. Here, I noticed that his ability to match pitch, even in large intervals, was exceptional.
His ability to follow along on graphic maps of music was also advanced. He would keep a precise beat in pointing, while other students would point from beginning to end but often with little connection to the tempo of the music. When I began lessons on melodic contour using xylophones, he could complete a phrase with little difficulty and would immediately try to play the entire melody. His instincts for determining the direction on the xylophone in order to create melodic patterns were very natural. Whenever he played an incorrect interval, he had little trouble finding the right note, showing no frustration in adjusting the tempo to make corrections.
Adam impressed me on a deeper level during an interactive whiteboard lesson that had several pages that showed the direction of different phrases. We spent part of one lesson singing through the song with students taking turns following the melodic path as I advanced the pages. In the next class I asked Adam to take a turn. I was hoping for more verbal participation, but he was not interested in singing the words. Instead, he took over advancing the pages, independently selecting the page needed for each phrase. The pages were not linearly organized and he had the form of the piece solved well enough to select the right page at a quick tempo. That allowed me to see that his musical understanding included more abstract concepts like form. Later, he confirmed this when I asked him to listen to La Raspa from a third grade lesson on rondo form. I pointed to A, then B, saying,
“different”, then A, saying, “same.” Then I played the recording to see how much scaffolding he might need. He needed almost none and was able to put the letters representing each section in order to show the A B A C A pattern of a rondo. That level of abstract thinking put things on a new plane.
Differentiated learning is inherent in general music classes, since the level of students’ musical experience varies widely. I had learned about “social constructivism” in my graduate work, which helped me become comfortable constructing lessons that support learners at varying stages of understanding (Wiggins). Adam provided a new view, however. A disparity now existed not within a classroom of students, but rather with one student’s level of understanding in contrast to his ability to be understood. I felt a strong desire to give Adam an opportunity to build on his musical connection to the world, since that way of thinking was clearly one of his strengths. Building upon his musical thinking could provide not only an avenue for expression, but might also provide a social role of identity and respect in Middle School and High School as it had that day in second grade.
If I could gain a better understanding of how Adam learned musically, I might be able to apply what I learned in my classroom with other students. To have more time with Adam as he interacted with music, I reconfigured the class time. We began as usual: singing, listening, mapping, and using instruments while focusing on a concept (melody, rhythm, form, etc.). When the students moved from a group activity to individual practice or movement activities, the paraprofessionals monitored the other students’ progress while Adam and I moved to a piano in a storage room. Here, he could experience music on an instrument more likely to be accessible in his future than a xylophone, and could learn at his own pace.
I video recorded a dozen of our sessions. This helped me learn about his musical growth as well as how I supported or inhibited that growth. While I allowed him to explore and apply what he had learned on xylophone during our first session, my aspirations for his growth took too much control on the second session. There, I reached in to “help” too soon. I was pushing his progress to the point that I was demonstrating for him over his play on the keyboard. My intention was not to be blatantly rude, although that was the result. Reflecting, I know that my concern was that Adam would lose focus and move on to a new musical idea when he was so close to “getting it.” I thought that scurrying in with support would reduce frustration on his part. I should have easily identified with his position. As a non-intuitive learner with technology, I have experienced the defeat of a “helper” impatiently reaching onto my computer keyboard to solve my issue. I needed to trust what I already knew of Adam: he makes changes to correct his musical errors with little frustration.
My approach changed with the next session, stepping back and allowing Adam more time to experiment, with fewer prompts. This change made his sessions more useful and meaningful for him and allowed me to gain what I had set out to learn: how does Adam learn musically? I discovered that he enjoys octaves. In recreating melodies, he often tried them out in different ranges. He also often played a melody or phrase simultaneously in octaves, validating the use of the piano, since his opportunity to engage in that way on a xylophone was clearly limited.
The strongest observation was that Adam learns through auditory means. He had been replaying demonstrated melodies easily, but I notice that the spatial configuration of the keyboard provides little scaffolding for Adam. While he did experiment with stepwise movement (stretching each arm to the
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