valuable online resources now available at your fingertips. Spend time breaking down concepts and skills your students need for success.


methods. Create your own task analysis.


Identify the most basic musical skill(s) students must be able to do to sight-sing accurately. Here is a hint: my first step was “maintain an accurate and consistent steady beat.” List succeeding skills/concepts in order, from most simple to most complex. Create your own exercises (or find ones you like) to help you introduce, teach, and assess each skill or group of skills in your list. You will need to determine a “final


goal” (how far into the whole sight-singing process will you take them?). I used the UIL (2016) middle school sight-singing requirements. Yours may include less or more depending on your students’ levels or your own expectations for the year. Once you have a goal in mind, determine your vehicle(s) for teaching.


letter names, solfège, or something else for singing pitches?


numbers in counting rhythm? Will you teach all students to read treble and bass clefs, just treble, or just bass? These are important but can muddy the water when you are attempting list skills and concepts. Save answering some or all of these questions until you reach point(s) where you must answer them to continue.


A word of caution. As you are


completing your own task analysis (or teaching approach), remember that your process, or order of operations, may or may not be the same as your choral teacher friends’ processes. It may or may not mirror different published


Will students use scale degrees, Will they use syllables or


Give yourself permission to


develop your own personal approach. You and your students will be thankful you did!


Additional Suggestions Developing your own approach to


teaching can be a highly rewarding task. However, it only one piece of the puzzle. There are essential practices in our classrooms that support our teaching and our students’ learning. Below are some suggestions to help you support your students’ learning. Help them buy in. You must convince


them that sight-singing is valuable and that it can be enjoyable. I told my students the truth: learning to sight-sing will be hard but rewarding.


I taught the required the daily


sight-singing procedures (routine) I wanted them to do each day. Beyond that, I tried to be creative in motivating them. We had Sight- Singing Breakfasts and Big Red Friday Sight-Singing Parties once or twice a month (our school colors were red and black). In each of these, students practiced sight-singing for 30-45 minutes and then had various treats for attending. Minimal financial and time costs on my part resulted in more motivation from them.


Teach every day. Teach sight-singing


every single day, from the first day to the last day, even on days after concerts, or before holidays. Consider what you students learn from your behaviors when you do this: sight- singing important, learning to read music is important.


Be consistent. Teach them your sight- singing process and use the same routine every day. Remember, there will be steps in the learning process that take longer than other steps. Do not give up and shift to something new when it is taking longer for your students to grasp the concepts and complete the skills.


Stay with your process


and reteach when needed. Assess constantly. As musicians we


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naturally assess the “good and bad” in each performance (sometimes to our detriment!). Use your innate “was it right, was it wrong” assessing abilities each day. Reteach when needed, move on when they have successfully grasped concept(s) and skills(s). Sometimes you have to reteach multiple lessons, other times you may teach it one time, and they “get it.” Assess and reflect upon your own teaching, and do it honestly. Ask yourself what could be improved or changed and what went well.


Sight-sing in concerts. One of the best


motivators for my students was when I explained in our March and May concerts to parents and other audience members that


40


students were learning performance skills, but also learning to read music. Using the process we did every day in class, they read a new piece of music for the first time in front of their parents and guests. Share their success with their families and friends.


One Final Note You will have days where they


students will do everything you ask, but struggle to grasp the concepts and skills. You will have days where they will fight your teaching efforts. You will have days when nothing goes right and you may doubt if what you are doing matters. And, you will have Utopian days, where everything goes right. They sight-sing perfectly and sing their literature beautifully, and you realize you have taught them well and that you have opened their worlds to new possibilities and a lifetime of music.


References


Bruner, J.S. (1977). The process of education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.


Choksy, L. (1981). The Kodály context. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall, Inc.


Fishkin, R. & Moz Staff (2015). Chapter 1: How search engines operate. In The beginners guide to SEO. Retrieved: https://moz.com/beginners-guide- to-seo/how-search-engines-operate


Gordon, E.E. (2012). Learning sequences in music: Skill, content, and patterns (2012 Edition). Chicago: GIA Publica- tions, Inc.


J.W. Pepper and Son (2016). “Sight-singing” search. Retrieved http://www.jw- pepper.com/sheet- music/search.jsp?keywords=sight-s inging


Jacques-Dalcroze, E. & Sadler, M. (1913). The eurhythmics of Jacques-Dalcroze. Boston: Small Maynard and Com- pany.


University Interscholastic League (UIL) (2016). Choir sight-reading criteria. Re- trieved:


http://www.uiltexas.org/music/co ncert-sight-reading/choir-sight- reading-criteria


Jane Kuehne is Associ- ate Professor of Music Education at Auburn University


May/June 2016


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