After a few weeks teaching my beginning band students, I spent most of my planning

time brainstorming an Impact on Student Learning Project that would effectively assist
students in learning content and refining existing knowledge. I gained inspiration when
conducting a rehearsal on one of their pieces entitled Beginner’s Rock. Since this piece
has influences from both jazz and rock music, there are frequent accidentals and
unfamiliar notes. I decided to use this piece as a template to build my project and
started creating lessons that would help students expand their music knowledge.
I started by creating a pre-test that would assess the current understanding of
each student. This test consisted of images of notes and students would identify the
note name for the first section of the test, and then identify the fingering for that note for
their individual instrument in part two. I created individualized tests for each instrument
by going through the score of Beginner’s Rock and writing down every note each
instrument plays. This google form format allowed me to view the scores by
instrumental section, as well as the score of each individual.
Concluding the pre-test, I noticed some students had trouble understanding the
rules of the key signature. Many students fell into the trap of identifying notes as natural
that would actually be changed by the key signature. There were also many students
who did very poorly on the test section involving instrument fingerings. This made me
think most students needed an interactive lesson that would allow them to practice
connecting the note names to fingerings. There were a few students that scored
perfectly on the pre-test, and this presented a challenge of including these students,
while allowing struggling students to improve.
I decided to start with the basics of note identification for the first lesson. With an
image of each clef and staff on the board, I presented the students with acronyms that
can help them remember the notes on the lines and spaces of their clef. I also
introduced how ledger lines extend above and below the staff. There aren’t any
acronyms for these notes so I just had them say the alphabet and practice identifying
these notes. Throughout this lesson I would check in frequently with students by calling
on people to identify notes, especially students who had trouble on the test.
Following the basic note identification lesson, I walked students through how to
identify notes that are affected by the key signature. I used the same format as the last
lesson with staff on the board and I would write the key signatures they may encounter.
We covered the rules of the key signature, such as what notes correspond with the
number of sharps or flats in the key signature and what octaves are affected. For
example, if there are two flats in the key signature, the notes that are affected will
always be B and E in any octave. I checked in with students frequently during this
lesson as well to make sure everyone was following.
I gave them two bell ringer quizzes after each lesson to assess their
understanding. These quizzes are identical to the sections they will see in their post-test
but the questions and answers are mixed up. I compared the average and individual
scores to the pre-test and took note of the areas of improvement each student showed.
Many students showed vast improvement between the pre-test and bell ringers and I
felt confident in their ability to recognize notes.
My greatest teaching tool and favorite overall activity I used during this unit was
an online program called Musicracer.com. This program is designed to give an
enjoyable and competitive nature to practicing note identification and instrument
fingerings. The game has eight questions per round and students will answer them as
fast as possible. The questions are simply matching the note name or fingering with the
image presented of a note on a staff. They must get all eight questions correct and they
report their time to me if they get a high score. Everyone loved playing this game and
they are still playing it during their down time before and after class. We started a
competitive score board between classes, as shown below, and so many students have
been playing to win in friendly competition.
After a few classes of teaching and assessing students, I felt confident that the
classes improved as a whole and would score vastly higher on the post-test. There
were still a few students, however, that either remained stagnant throughout lessons, or
missed class frequently. Before test day, I had these students fill out a worksheet with
every note name and instrument fingering they would need for the test. I would check
their work and tell them that this worksheet is the only thing they need to study.
Concluding the post-test, I was thrilled with the results of the class. As shown
below, the average between all the classes improved by twenty percent. Many students
improved and everyone received a score that reflected their work effort. With only a few
outliers of students that resisted learning and growing during most lessons, everyone
retained the information from the past few weeks. I couldn’t be more thrilled with the
outcome and I am ecstatic that my many hours of planning and teaching have paid off.