A great “exit ticket” for older students: At the end of class, give your students a few minutes to tweet a summary of the lesson (in 140 characters or less) using a designated hashtag, like #<CLASSNAMEdate> or #<schoolabbreviation>music<date>. Encourage them
10 Fun Formative Assessments
Here are some creative formative assessments for this beautiful Friday! Get children using their critical thinking skills to synthesize their knowledge and apply what they have learned. These ideas can be used in any subject. Students design an ad (for a
Exit Slips as Formative Assessment
Well, I officially went back into school today to start getting ready for the upcoming school year. I’m just starting to get my head around my long-term view of what I’ll be teaching, but I have spent some time over
Assessment for/as/of Learning
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
What’s on your Walls?
Many PYP schools have guidelines about what should be on the walls, but it is worth stopping to reflect once in a while about what you are doing with this valuable teaching space. That’s right: teaching space. I’ve found that
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