Assessment is a big part of teaching. Without assessment, we don’t know what to teach (at least, we shouldn’t). We must constantly monitor and adjust our teaching to keep learning on track. Formative assessment and teaching are directly linked; neither
Feedback, Not Tests
In the culture of standardized testing, it’s difficult to escape into meaningful assessment—usually because of lack of time, not lack of desire. But as we think about assessing, we need to remember that it is central to our teaching and
Solfège Stars
I have studied under some amazing Solfège teachers and seen how wonderfully it can help students to audiate and connect with the music, so I try to incorporate it wherever possible, particularly in my early years classes. Today I am sharing
An Inquiry Into…the Instruments
Nearly everyone does a unit on the instruments of the orchestra, but there are as many approaches as there are music teachers. I’ve probably approached it in ten different ways in as many years within my own program. In my first
“Sitting Beside” Your Students
Another interesting moment at the weekend’s workshop: I learned that the word “assessment” has its roots in Latin. That’s no surprise, given that a huge chunk of English words have their roots in Latin. What is a surprise is that
Assessment for Learning
I spent this weekend at a workshop on assessment as a means of informing learning. As a music teacher, I constantly thirst for more knowledge about authentic assessment. In particular, how can I assess all my 300+ students meaningfully and
HOTS for the Elements
I took a new approach to introducing the elements of music this time around. Inspired by oh-so-many PYP workshops where we split up the reading and then taught each other, I split up the students into groups so that each