Josie Garner

garnerje@dukes.jmu.edu
Block 4 - Middle School Band

Impact on Student Learning Project

Purpose

The purpose of this project was to introduce beginning band students to eight common italian
tempo markings in music. Beginning band students have spent so much time focusing on how
to play their instrument and learning notes, so this was a nice change of pace and something
that will help them grow as musicians in band class. After identifying what my goals were for the
lesson and which italian tempo markings to use, I created a pre assessment, a three unit lesson
involving these tempo markings, and a post assessment.

Unit Standards

VA Music SOLs
Technique and Application
MIB.12 The student will demonstrate music literacy.
a) Identify, define, and use basic standard and instrument specific notation for pitch,
rhythm, meter, articulation, dynamics, and other elements of music.
f) Define and apply music terminology found in the music literature being studied
MIB.16 The student will demonstrate musicianship and ensemble skills at a beginning level.
f) Maintain a steady beat at various tempos in the music literature being studied.

Unit Objectives

The student will be able to:

- Define Andante, Maeostoso, Allegro, Adagio, Moderato, Presto, Largo, Vivace in a
music context
- Play repeated quarter notes on concert F in each of the different tempos
- Be able to listen to a piece of music and decide if it fast or slow music
- Be able to listen to a piece of music and decide what italian tempo marking it might
match the music
Student Pre-Assessment

Pre-Assessment Link: https://forms.gle/onHuKadpKqumDrxB9

Overview:

The pre-assessment that students took was a multiple choice drop down option Google Forms
quiz that students took on their Chromebooks. The questions consisted of a eight dropdown
tempo options for each question that students had to match up to the definition. This quiz was
given to students at the beginning of class before they unpacked their instruments. All of the
questions were formatted exactly the same so that results would be consistent across all three
of the beginning band classes. The quiz was ungraded and used purely to see where students
were with the information and what they did or did not know. Students were required to answer
every question and if they were completely unsure they were encouraged to take their best
guess.

While this quiz was not timed, I made sure to give students as much time as they needed to
accommodate for students that had this accommodation listed on their 504 Plans or IEPs. For a
student that has an intellectual disability I sat next to him and read out the questions/answers to
help him be able to focus on the pre-assessment and help to pace him. For the continuation of
the unit, I decided that the goal for this student would just be to identify if music or slow. I made
sure to incorporate this into my future lessons and continued to observe his body language and
reactions to the music.
Pre-Assessment Results
\
Analysis:
Out of all three beginning band classes, student answers were very wide spread. For all
questions except number 3 “At a moderate tempo” with the answer being “Moderato,” the
correct answer choice was chosen by only 5.5%-20% of students with the lowest score being 3
students out of 55 for “Allegro.” 58.2% of students got “Moderato” correct and this was
encouraging because that indicated that students were at least reading the questions and using
some critical thinking to make connections from the question to answer choices. With this data,
my goal was to have 80% of students choose the correct answer on the post-assessment.
Lesson One (04/18/22 & 04/19/22)
Link to Lesson Plan: Lesson 1 - Impact Project
Link to YouTube video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po4gzmsyELc
Link to Study Guide: Study Guide

For this lesson students began by taking the pre-assessment Google Forms quiz. This quiz
consisted of eight questions with dropdown options for students to choose from. If students did
not know the correct answer they were encouraged to select their best guess. I chose not to
include an “I don’t know/I’m unsure” option because I was afraid that the majority of students
would not even look at the answer choices and just choose that option immediately. After
students finished the quiz I asked them how it went for them. Most of them responded that they
didn’t know the answer to any and a couple students said they knew a few of them. After that
we started the lesson with a video that introduced students to the tempos from the quiz and had
classical and modern day music examples. I told students to listen carefully to each example
and try to feel the pulse/beat of the music to help them connect the slow, fast, or medium feeling
to the tempos from their quiz. Following this we filled in a study guide for students to have for
the week to study for the pos-test and use as a resource during class instruciton.

Lesson Two (04/20/22) & (04/21/22)

Link to Lesson Plan: Lesson 2 - Impact Project
Link to YouTube videos: Video 1 & Video 2

Lesson two began with two YouTube videos. The first video began with four song examples that
students listened to and had to figure out whether it was fast or slow music. They were
encouraged to tap their foot or pat their leg to help them feel the pulse. I paused between each
song and we talked about what speed it was. After that we watched the second YouTube video
which had each tempo with musical examples and animals that represented the speed of each
example. I paused the video between each musical example and we discussed why this music
was Adagio, Allegro, Vivace, etc. After this, students played a two measure rhythmic exercise
together on their concert F scale and played a different exercise in each of the different tempos.
Lesson Three (04/22/22) & (04/25/22)
Link to Lesson Plan: Lesson 3 - Impact Project

Lesson three began with a review of the student’s study guide that they filled out in the first
lesson. We went through each of the eight tempo markings and listened to short music
examples between each one. After this review, students played a two measure rhythmic
exercise together on their concert Ab scale and played a different exercise in each of the
different tempos. We looked over the study guide once more and students had the opportunity
to ask any questions that they had. After this, students took the post-assessment on their
Chromebooks.
Post-Assessment Results
Google Forms Quiz Link: https://forms.gle/q9T8aSoqB4T5uNSy5
Analysis:
In the post assessment, the average score across all three beginning band classes increased
from 20.5% to 64.6%. 20 out of 60 students scored a perfect score on the post assessment, and
around 40% of students got at least half of the questions correct. In the pre-assessment, the
percentage of correct answer responses for each question ranged from 5.5%-20% of students.
In the post-assessment, correct responses improved to 64.6%-75%.
Reflection

Evidence of Extent of Student Growth:

The average overall post-assessment score increased greatly and only 2 out of 60 students did
not get any of the questions correct. 33% of students received a perfect score on the
assignment. 58/60 students improved their score from the pre-assessment to the
post-assessment by at least one correct answer. While students were aware that they had a
post-assessment quiz on either 04/22 or 04/25, a majority of the students forgot about the
post-assessment quiz. Many students were very negative towards having to take the test or
extremely nervous with a preset idea that they were going to fail. After reviewing the material,
students seemed to feel much better about the test and less negative overall. Students were
able to answer questions during the review period without their study guides and were not afraid
to ask questions. I had at least 10 students come up to me after class telling me they got a
perfect score and I of course told them great job and that I was proud of them. I was delighted to
see that students were excited about getting perfect scores. Prior to this unit, students had no
experience with italian tempo markings. They were familiar with what bpm was when it was
written on their music, but all eight tempo markings were a new concept for all of them. Students
have started to be able to hear whether music is expressive, lively, bright, etc. which is
incredible for beginning band students. Overall, students seem to have responded well to this
unit and I will continue to bring tempo questions into my lessons to keep students thinking about
aware.

Evidence of Modification and Differentiation:

Specific differentiation is listed in lesson plans for this unit, but the larget modifications made
were to modality in how the information was delivered. Throughout the lesson I tried to
incorporate many different ways of learning the material by using multiple YouTube videos,
having students aurally read the tempos with definitions for the class, and having students use
their instruments to play in each tempo. For students that had trouble pronouncing the tempo
markings, I sat next to them and read each out outloud for them to hear, process, and repeat
back. Using different methods to teach the curriculum was beneficial to students because it
incorporated the students’ different learning processes over the course of the whole unit. It was
very interesting to see how each of the three beginning band classes reacted to the lessons.
Some classes enjoyed the YouTube videos more than others, and some preferred to apply the
information directly to their instruments and play it. One class in particular benefits from a lot of
repetition, so I made sure to repeat the information being discussed in the moment multiple
times to help that class retain it more successfully.

Reflection for Future Lessons/Units:

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with this unit. Most of the students were excited to learn something
new and change up their typical class routine. I think that the incorporation of the YouTube
videos made this unit more interesting to students only because they could watch/listen to
someone other than me talk about the information. Each class responded well to the
progression of the information, and I think that this lesson went at a good pace. In the future, I
would like to incorporate more instrument playing into this lesson so that students can directly
apply it to what they are doing in class. Getting students to be able to play expressively or lively
in beginning band is a huge step for them becoming more advanced players. I would also like to
include more listening opportunities for students. While the Youtube videos were helpful, I think
just being able to listen to music and the different qualities unique to each song would be very
inspirational to young players. Most of our learning was done as a group, but maybe finding
more individual opportunities would have helped students grasp the information better. If I were
to teach this lesson again, I would spend at least another lesson or two on this topic before
giving students the post-assessment quiz. Maybe even having students pick a tempo and find a
song on their own that they think falls under that tempo and presenting it to the class would’ve
been a fun way to getting everyone more involved individually.