A New Practice Plan For Middle School Orchestra Elisabeth Sato


Teachers College, Columbia University elisabethrsato@gmail.com


my students, “You need to practice.” I began to realize, however, that the expectations I had for my students regarding practicing were just as vague as my instructions. Students may have been practicing at home, but omitted from this were specific goals to focus on while practicing. This prompted me to develop a plan to incorporate different instruction- al strategies into my teaching that would include teaching my students how to practice effectively and also give them the opportunity to be in- volved in the assessment process. I would like to share the practice and assessment strategies that I have been implementing this school year in my middle school orchestra ensemble.


A Before


Setting The Foundation creating


the “practice


plan,” I first wanted to assess my students’ current strategies, motiva- tion, and frequency of practicing. I created a brief five-point Likert-type scale survey and administered it to my ensemble as a warm-up activity. Statements included items such as: “When I practice my music, I play it from beginning to end;” “I only practice when I have an upcoming performance;” and “I practice my


TEMPO


s a middle school orches- tra teacher, I found my- self frequently saying to


music slowly and gradually increase the tempo.” Students selected an- swers that ranged from strongly dis- agree to strongly agree. There was also a short multiple-choice section where students responded with the average number of weekly practicing hours and indicated any additional motivational factors that may af- fect their practicing (e.g. When I do practice, it is because I want to get better at my instrument, or I do not practice because I do not know how to practice). The results


from the


survey provided great insight into the current strategies my students are using when they practice and what motivates them to practice. The in- formation from the survey set the foundation from which I could build my practice plan.


Identifying Musical Elements


Playing and performing music is a large component of my middle school orchestra, but listening to and analyzing music are, of course, equally as important. After all of our performances, my students watch a video recording of their concert and complete a self-reflection form. The next step in my practice plan was to have my students listen to and evaluate different recordings of other musicians. Using YouTube as a resource, I found several videos


44


of beginning and amateur string players performing the same pieces and played just the audio for the students. While listening, students wrote down strong and weak aspects of the performances on a template that I created and rated the level of each performance holistically. I encouraged students to avoid words such as “good” and “bad” and instead focus on positive elements in all of the performances and specific areas that could be improved on. I also encouraged them to use any musical terms they knew. This activity allowed me to better understand which musical elements my students could easily identify and which musical elements they found to be important in a performance. After listening to and evaluating the performances, we discussed what we heard as a class and compiled a master list of the music vocabulary that was used to describe each performance.


Including Students In The Assessment Process


During each marking period, I


have my students complete practice checks as a formative assessment: I assign warm-ups or specific mea- sures from our concert music, and students submit their practice checks electronically. As part of my new practice plan, students would not


MAY 2018


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