Student Background 2

Student B is a high school sophomore who was born and raised in the area. She comes

from a middle-class family and has a 2-parent household. Student has an IEP and has been

diagnosed with autism. It has also been suspected by parents and teacher that there may be

another special need present, but it has not been confirmed. The student has around a 4 th

grade reading and writing level. Her cognitive and social development also comes across as

younger. In the classroom, the student will frequently talk to herself and be distracted in class.

Occasionally, they will become upset when asked to do something. Usually, once other

students start singing for a period of time, student B will join them and begin focusing on the

music. The student enjoys chorus class and is usually excited to sing and dance. The student is

also very involved in their church. It has been noted by parents and friends that the student

does much better musically and behaviorally in the church music setting. This may be because

the worship songs are sung in unison with a much bigger group, so matching pitch may be

easier for the student. Other instrumentation is also present.

It is difficult to assess music learning in the student because each day can be drastically

different. Some days, it is hard to tell if the student is engaged or not and other days, they can

match pitch, and remember rhythms very well. From what I have heard from the teacher,

overall, there has been a very slow and gradual improvement in behavior and social interaction.

Any musical improvement will be very slow and take time.

 The student does better in a highly structured classroom. Keeping a routine and doing

activities in chunks are helpful. I think having instruments the student can touch, such as a

theremin, otomatone or using a makey-makey attached to play dough, could help the student

explore differences in pitch more. In this particular choir setting, using very short echoes is

helpful. This can be done by doing short phrases on solfege or short phrases of text from a

song. Showing hand signs or visual cues that the pitch is moving up or down also aids the

student in their learning. The student usually does better with pitch when using solfege. Having

visual pictures of the solfège hand signs in the classroom and pointing to them would be helpful

for the student. Since the student struggles reading text, music literacy is also difficult. Having

pictured rhythms may be helpful for the student. This would have something like, one apple in

a square means a quarter note and two apples in a square mean two eighth notes. Deriving

meaning from music is also harder for them. I like to say things to the class like, “what color is

this song?” It helps students think about meaning in a different way, and may help Student B to

establish some sort of connection to the music in a meaningful way.