A Research Project On Blue Ridge Middle School

Perhaps the most tangible benefit of music education for students is the increase in their performance in the classroom. People often say, “Music makes you smarter,” but where is the evidence? As South Dakota State University’s Professor Kevin Kessler eloquently stated via email, “How were you

Music therapy helps individuals with disabilities to identify and express his or her emotions as well as to assist in the development of verbal communication, speech and language skills. The data collection tool implemented to track the progress of students focused on student participation and independence levels. These levels were tracked weekly and broken down into 5 sections: Independent, Verbal, Gestural, Physical, and No Participation. Data was also collected when measuring a student’s response to musical selection and to see if a rhythm was followed in either double or triple meter.

Question 1: Can students demonstrate music growth through naming letter names of notes written on the staff with treble and bass clefs from F2 to G5? The research instrument entitled Grand Staff required students to generate letter names of notes placed on the staff with treble and bass clefs. Seventh and eighth grade students would have prior knowledge of note letter names from previous years in chorus. Sixth grade students would have prior

Assessment and grading of students are two of the most controversial and debated topics within music education. Where as in most classes this will be a simple and straightforward process of checking the student’s work to the answer key, or assessing their progress through their test scores, music educators, especially in elementary music education, sometimes struggle with these two essential elements of any classroom. The obstacles that make this process difficult include: limited time, a great volume of students, and restrictive ambiguous grading criteria on the part of the school district as a whole. Many music teachers debate

The classroom has always been a place for learning and taking on new challenges. Normally, the discovery has some kind of connection to the class one is taking, however recently 11 out of 10 students have reported a new kind of discovery: a musical one.

Scientists have established the existence of strong links between music and personal development. They claim that playing an instrument can increase the student’s sense of achievement, self-esteem, confidence; persistence, punctuality and discipline (Gardiner et al. 1996)

The power of education resides within its ability to fruitfully illuminate and transform the mind of a student. Unfortunately, when this education lacks depth and substance it can limit the student in a manner that creates toxicity towards growing. One of the subjects that helps create a robust scholar but always finds itself in danger is music education. As a musician, most of my work has been in practicing and performing, but the more important aspect of my passion that is often overlooked is giving back through educating the younger generation.

JoAnne Haroutounian joins the conversation with her book Kindling the Spark: Recognizing and Developing Musical Talent. In her book, she attempts to broaden the reader’s understanding of different musical abilities and capacities by exploring different perspectives of musical talent. Haroutounian presents her recommendations for musical talent identification, in which she also summarizes the criteria that characterize musical talent and provides steps for discovering potential as well as demonstrated talent in a wide variety of school settings. In the last section of the book, she covers the stages of musical development and stresses the need for specialized instruction and guidance for talented musicians.

Title: Performing: Realizing artistic ideas and work through interpretation and presentation Description: Using pieces currently integrated into classroom instruction or musical pieces studied independently, students will select specific sections that exemplify technical/stylistic/artistic challenges to overcome; work toward improving the performance quality of identified challenges; demonstrate and document processes for addressing the challenges; demonstrate and reflect upon achievement.

Music assessments should not be associated with the mentality of, just generating a grade, or, to pass the teaching evaluation. Music assessments should be the commitment of providing feedback for students, and for teachers, in order to achieve and grasp a higher standard of learning. According to Wesolowski (2015), it is said those who “track students progress can make a difference in the learning and your teaching” (p. 39). To help achieve this mentality, do not solely weigh grades on non-achievable standards such as attendance and class participation, but focus on performance based, or achievable aspects instead. In a study done by Joshua Russell and James Austin (2015), it was found that sixty percent of teachers who grade on these standards of non-achievable quality have inflated grades, with three quarters of students receiving an A and less than ten students receiving a C or lower (Russell and Austin, 2015, p. 48-49). Instead of using this inflated policy, focus on grading the “valid indicators of achievement” (p. 53) for the student’s performance, which was taken from Pellegrino, Conway, & Russell’s article (2015). These valid indicators point toward the student’s use of tempo, dynamics, phrasing, and other musical abilities.

2. Students will demonstrate the ability to correctly operate mechanical intonation adjustments on their instrument.

[The three work samples from the focus students reflect three categories of students in this flute sectional: average students, students who need additional assistance, and students who are high-achieving focus students

The first school that we observed was Holland Hall. As we walked into the classroom, the room had many colorful posters, a riser for the students to sit, enough Orff instruments for every student, and many other musical expressions. The room was a very welcoming and fostering for educational purposes. The lesson was split into different parts. The first part was learning a Russian folk dance. The students were all behaved very attentive to the instructions. The class responded very positively to the instructions. The next part of the class was learning music theory. The teacher utilized the smart board in order to aid the process of learning intervals. The last part of the class was to transfer the lesson learned on the smart board to the Orff instruments. Students showed clear competency in mallet technique and note recognition. The teacher utilized Orff’s and Dalcroze’s methods of teaching. With the constant change in direction of the lesson, the students stayed engaged throughout the whole lesson. The students were able to perform locomotor actions, along with performing.

For this study I expect the participation of at least 30 volunteers within the ages of 45-50 years (men and women) which are on-line students at graduate level at Southern New Hampshire University enrolled in a Research Methods course. Participants must not have any previous training in any musical instrument. This particular characteristic would be required for the reason that it has been found that people with such training could excel in the variable that is expected to be measured (recall). Participants will not receive compensation for their participation.

First the test subjects were selected and asked to fill out their most current math and English classes and what grade they are in. Next they are asked to rate the four songs (Dark Horse by Katy Perry, Cruise by Florida Georgia Line, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queens, and Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi) from one to four, one being their favorite. The testing then begins. There are two worksheets for each test either math or literature, and each worksheet are tested for two