Walk into an elementary music room and you're likely to see students singing, reading, playing instruments, listening, improvising, and moving. Each of these activities can give us crucial insight into how our students are learning, and how we can help them.
That insight is called assessment.
Sure, assessments could look like students sitting with a pencil and paper, writing down responses to the teacher's questions.
It could like students using ipads.
Students working in small groups at centers.
Students playing percussion instruments.
It might look like dancing. . .
Sound like singing. . .
In short, assessment in music can - and should - look basically like a typical day in your music room.
You can read more principles of music assessment here.
I try to take down some form of assessment in every single lesson. Many of these assessments will never make it to a grade book, but they make me so happy to look at.
Without these daily assessments I might forget that the student acting out and running all over the room can complete every musical task well above my expectation.
He doesn't need to try harder to focus. He's bored. But I might forget, or never know at all, unless I've been tracking his performance.
Daily assessments point out that the child who more or less matches pitch in March but still couldn't find her head voice in January. That's an accomplishment worth celebrating. But with all the students I see in a week I might forget how far this one student has come, or never notice her progress at all.
When our assessments are thoughtfully constructed and consistently implemented they give us a direct picture of our effectiveness as educators.
We don't assess our students because the state says we must. We don't do it for our principals. We don't do it because it's trendy to track data.
Today I'm giving you a peek into what works for me in my classroom. These are simple assessment ideas that are easy to implement. And the best part is, you're probably doing many of them already!
I know every teaching situation is different, and some schools have more tech tools available than others. However, these ideas are easily modified to fit in a variety of scenarios.
Nearpod is a new (to me) app that allows you to post an interactive presentation across multiple screens. That could come in handy if you're at a one-to-one school where every student has an ipad. You could make a one question multiple choice quiz for an exit ticket (more on that later).
You also could create a very simple presentation giving your students instructions to follow in centers if your class only has one ipad. Embed a recording of yourself speaking the directions or type them out, include images of what the final project should look like. . . Whatever your needs are!
Audio recordings could also can be used in centers if you have students practicing sight reading or sight singing. Simply have students press play on the recording device of your choice, then state their name and class, and get going! It lets you be in another part of the room, either assisting or taking grades of your own, while the students collect the data for you.
This can also be done during whole class instruction if you don't want to carry around a clipboard. Record the activity in which students are soloing and then listen back to the 5 - 10 minute clip you recorded to write down your grade.
With careful planning this idea could actually save you a lot of time!
This idea is tried-and-true by so many music teachers, and there's a reason it works so well. The goal of a singing game is to get students to sing along in a fun, stress-free environment.
Kindergarten - Good King, Leopold
What to Assess: Singing voice, speaking voice, yelling voice, whisper voice
** By the way, Anne Mileski just released a great podcast about solo singing in kindergarten with some great assessment tips.
1st Grade - Cuckoo
What to Assess: Singing voice; sol, mi; steady beat; quarter, eighth notes
2nd Grade - 'Round and 'Round
What to Assess: Singing voice, La, quarter, eighth notes
3rd Grade - Tideo
What to Assess: MRD, 16th notes
4th Grade - Big Fat Biscuit
What to Assess: Low la; dotted quarter and eighth note
5th - Sail Away Ladies.
What to Assess: 16th note patterns (like taka-di and ta-mi)
Any song that has an easily dividable form can be given out as solos and made into a call-and-response activity. With your older kiddos the possibilities are endless and you can easily modify the call or response to fit your assessment needs.
