UbD and the Ensemble: Understanding – More than the method book!

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Note: The UbD and the Ensemble series is a sort of guided tour through the book Understanding by Design by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins. In this series, I attempt to connect the work they have done to vocal and instrumental ensembles and the challenges of designing rehearsals with student understanding in mind. Please feel free to comment with your own experience in teaching music for understanding!

Essential Questions: How do I know students understand the music we play? What does it mean to understand a piece of music? what does it mean to understand a musical concept? What understandings do I take for granted when teaching novice students?

Syncopation Without Understanding?

During my student teaching experience, I designed a 5th grade general music lesson on syncopation to teach for one of my supervisor site visits. I identified the enduring understandings and skills I wanted students to take away, I made sure to emphasize sound before sight, and I designed assessments to make sure that each students truly understood syncopation!

I prepped everything, greeted my supervisor, and welcomed the students into the room! We started by practicing some syncopated patterns. The students did great! But when I tried to link that performance to the symbols of music, I received a lot of blank stares. I tried to pull them along for a while, but eventually had to apologize to the students. I hadn’t assessed their understanding before hand. They had been looking at rhythmic patterns for years of classroom music. They knew what a quarter note was. They knew what an eighth note was! They could perform chants that related to rhythmic figures.

But when asked to write a short phrase using these figures in a different format (moving things around to create syncopation), they couldn’t do it! My supervisor was gracious and said I handled the situation well, but I was really bothered by this! How could my carefully constructed lesson plan fail so miserably? I even used UbD principles to guide my design process!

Though the students could perform rhythmic patterns and even identify them, they lacked a meaningful and transferable understanding of rhythm and rhythmic patterns. What’s the deal?

What does it mean to understand?

My mistake with the syncopation lesson is a great example of what McTighe and Wiggins call the Expert Blind Spot. The Expert Blind Spot describes how teachers often gloss over hard-won understandings and unconventional ideas that are assumed to be easy to understand when in fact they are core ideas that need to be uncovered in order for novices to understand them. I assumed that students understood rhythmic patterns because they could perform them (when in fact they were merely mimicking them), I didn’t account for the blind spot in my own understanding! I probably gained a real understanding of rhythmic patterns sometime in middle school or high school and have operated with the expert blind spot ever since.

Understandings represent the core principles of a field. In ensemble study, things like rhythm, communication, dynamics, and even music notation, are all deep understandings that students need to be successful! Unfortunately, we rarely design learning experiences that emphasize transfer of these concepts. Instead, we teach the discreet skills and hope students will begin to apply them to the next exercise in the method book.

Musical understanding must mean more than successfully performing a piece of music. Musical understanding is the constructed whole concept that organizes and guides the use of skills and strategies when confronted with a foreign piece of music or knowledge. When we teach for musical understandings, we encourage students to consider the skills they have learned and make truly musical decisions, just as professional musicians would, and apply those to new music.

I don’t mean to suggest that the performance should not be the end goal. Music educators have been doing the performance task part of UbD since we started teaching others how to make music! But repetition of discrete pieces of music (especially when they are taken from a march through the method book) does not mean that students know what to do when they encounter new musical material!

What concepts do I have to reteach with every new piece?

One way to define understandings is to identify common misunderstandings that students have. What skills aren’t being transferred? What underlying process needs to be understood for students to use their musical skills intelligently? What musical decisions do students need to encounter?

I believe that the musical ensemble is a truly unique opportunity for our students. It is one of the only places where they are allowed to make something beautiful with their peers as part of a whole! If we are to defend this art form in schools, shouldn’t we ensure that students are getting the most out of the opportunities for creativity in every moment of rehearsal? When every interpretation of the notation on the page is defined by the conductor, how can students be creative? By teaching for musical understanding, students are given the cognitive tools to make creative decisions and raise the standard of artistic performance. That might only mean choosing what kind of forte to use, but that is still a musical decision that requires understanding of the musical concept!

Understandings cannot, however, be taught independently from the musical process of performing! They must struggle with the understandings while continuing to play the instrument! The musical decisions and understandings musicians use are executed live in every performance they make. Music educators teaching for understanding will provide opportunities for students to reflect on their performance and identify the musical choices they made. 

Syncopation With Understanding!

What would I do differently? First, I would assess students progress towards understanding of rhythm as a whole. To what extent can the students use, identify, and create new music using rhythm? To what extent do students understand the way length of notes relate to each other, to measures of music, and to whole phrases?

If I had simply done that work, I would have known that the students needed deeper understanding of rhythm as a whole before embarking on the exciting new world of syncopation!

How has the Expert Blind Spot showed up in your own teaching? How do you ensure that students truly understand the musical concepts presented in your curriculum? In what ways do you encourage students to reflect on their musical decision making?

Enduring Understanding: Understanding is more than the discrete facts of music (musical elements, notes on the page, individual pieces). Understanding is the meaningful insight that requires uncovering and transfers to new musical experiences.
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UbD and the Ensemble: Backwards is Better!

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Essential Questions: Why aren’t my students learning what I’m teaching? Why do I feel like I have to reteach concepts over and over and over again?

NCCAS Review Starts Today!

The National Coalition for Common Art Standards announced recently that they would be releasing drafts of the K-8 Art standards for review this evening. I watched the orientation video and was thrilled to find that the new Common Arts Standards will include Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions to accompany each standard!

The NCCAS is revising the 1994 Arts Standards for the 21st Century!

The NCCAS has deliberately chosen to help teachers in both general music and performance classrooms identify the understandings that students need to be successful as musicians.

The “So What?” of Music Education

One of the biggest buzzwords in music education in the last few years is advocacy. Everybody knows that music education is one of the first things to go when budgets get tight. Music educators lament the diminishing position of formal music in our society and the National Association for Music Education has gone as far to establish whole organizations dedicated to music education advocacy like the Advocacy Groundswell or the Give A Note Foundation.

These organizations are established to “cultivate an online community of NAfME members from across the country interested in participating in advocacy initiatives, engaging in discussions about advocacy and regularly digesting advocacy news”  and “to expand and increase music education opportunities for all children.“ 

But why do we need advocacy? We haven’t always needed to defend our profession so vehemently to school boards and superintendents. Certainly the culture has changed, but I’m not sure that’s all. I think the main reason that music educators struggle with advocacy in their districts and schools is that the reason for music education is not evident in every single rehearsal.

It’s not just about budgets. No one doubts the necessity of math or social studies (though curiously only one is tested regularly). I think it’s easier for music educators to get caught up in planning for concerts, half-time shows, or competitions that we sometimes fail to communicate the purpose and reason for our work in music education. We still know what those reasons are, but we fail to communicate them to our students, parents, administrators and communities.

I believe that Understanding By Design has the potential to refocus the work of band and choir directors by refocusing on the “Why?” and “So what?” of music. When we structure our units, performances, and rehearsals around the enduring understandings at the heart of musical life, we argue for music in schools with every lesson we teach.

Three Stages of Design

McTighe and Wiggins offer a model for curriculum unit design to ensure that the whole design is aligned to the understandings students should have at the end of the unit.

Identify Desired Results

What musical understandings should students possess? What questions are central to musical understandings? What questions and debates have musicians, composers, or philosophers wrestled with throughout history? What are the understandings that link all of the associated musical skills we want our students to learn?

By defining our desired understandings, questions, knowledge, and skills, ensemble leaders can structure rehearsal planning not only around preparing for a specific performance, but for preparing students for a lifetime of creative music making! Identifying the desired results answers the “so what?” of daily rehearsals!

Determine Acceptable Evidence

Is performance enough? Is it possible for students to do well in a playing test without understanding the concept? What kind of evidence would I need to prove student understanding? How do I know they will use that understanding on the next musical challenge?

What real-world musical activities can students engage in to prove they have gained a deeper understanding of a musical concept? When music educators think more deeply about the kind of understandings they want students to achieve, they design authentic performance tasks for students to prove that understandings. These performance tasks for authentic assessment should relate to and inform the students musical performance. They should reflect the real challenges that musicians face in the world and evince the musical understandings achieved through musical practice. Again, when students encounter real musical challenges that result in deep understanding, the reason for our work as music educators becomes evident in the daily work of students.

planning learning experiences and instruction

How well do my current strategies foster student understanding? What doesn’t work? Where can I become more effective? Are my teaching strategies resulting in student understanding? How well are my rehearsal strategies pointing toward the enduring understandings I want my students to achieve? 

The daily rehearsal plan must evince the design work we have done as educators so that students come away with the skills necessary to perform in concert as well as the understandings necessary to make musical decisions in future musical experiences. When students are confronted with the questions at the heart of musical study, each rehearsal and practice session becomes a quest to deeper understanding.

The UbD Design Standards

In the world of UbD, it isn’t enough to use the system to design a lesson. The authors stress the importance of submitting designs to critical review by the designer, administrators, and peers using established standards that ensure that unit designs are truly aligned and best elicit authentic understandings.

This process of critical review also enables teachers to collaborate, refine their skills, and build their professional repertoire in order to better create learning experiences for their students.

UbD Design Standards by Stage

UbD Design Standards by Stage

Stage One: To what extent does the design teach musical concepts behind the musical skills and literature used in the design?

Stage Two: To what extent does the assessments measure understanding and not just achievement of skills or discreet knowledge? It is not enough to provide the musical experience. Assessment of understanding and for learning is vital.

Stage Three: How does the daily rehearsal engage students in meaningful learning for understanding?

This is what I failed to account for in my first UbD unit. I didn’t connect the performance to the musical experience. I relied on simple activities and hoped that enduring understandings would find their way into the lesson! I didn’t present students with the challenging questions at the heart of the musical experience. Not because I didn’t try, but because I don’t think I understood it fully myself!

That’s why I’m so excited to read through the K-8 Common Arts Standards! They have the potential to help music educators identify the understandings that all students should have in the arts.

How do your units and rehearsals match up? How successful have you been in structuring your rehearsals for enduring understandings and transfer? What specific strategies have you found successful in teaching for understanding and transfer? What enduring understandings and essential questions have caught your students’ attention?

Enduring Understanding: Units designed with the desired results of learning at the center are more likely to result in authentic student understanding.
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UbD and the Ensemble: Introduction

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Philharmonic Orchestra of Jalisco (Guadalajara...

Philharmonic Orchestra of Jalisco (Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Essential Questions: Do our current models of rehearsal planning really accomplish what we want for our students? Are my students learning what I’m teaching? Am I making the best use of each minute of rehearsal?

My First Experience with UbD

Day after day I sat through Dr. U’s class, racking my brain for ways to apply countless vocabulary, comprehension, and literacy techniques into my future music class. Honestly, I wasn’t seeing much. Sure, students need to know what piano means. They definitely need to be able to perform a sforzando. But that comes with practice, right? They learn the word by practicing the technique! I thought that was a pretty decent vocabulary strategy! (and to some extent, I still do!)

And then we started UbD.

“Dear teachers,” she said, with her characteristic tone and carefully chosen words, “Today we will begin looking at Understanding by Design.” Now, I don’t remember if that’s how she started the class (I sincerely doubt it), but it got my attention. For a few years I’d been unsatisfied with two things about my education classes and music education classes. The education classes didn’t seem to have a lot to say about how to teach traditional large ensembles and music education classes didn’t have a lot to say about how to use education concepts, research, and psychology to bolster the rehearsal strategies learned in methods courses.

As Dr. Uffelman introduced Understanding by Design (UbD) it seemed promising. The old way of thinking about lesson plans never seemed logical to me for use in the music classroom. Each rehearsal plan was too similar to necessitate all of that writing! Often, I resorted to writing lesson plans about music appreciation or music history so I didn’t have to work with that format in rehearsal settings. But Understanding by Design seemed different. It made sense to me that students should understand the big concepts behind their disparate pieces of knowledge or skills in order to better apply them in different contexts. That made sense for an ensemble! Finally!

And so, I set out to write my lesson plan for my capstone project.

Listen, Understand, Act

Listen, Understand, Act (Photo credit: highersights)

That short unit wasn’t particularly successful. Now, I think I know why, and it has to deal with a really fascinating part of UbD that I’ll discuss in a blog post later in this series: the UbD Design Standards. Even though I used the format to structure my unit, I didn’t make sure that everything was aligned throughout.

What’s understanding?!

Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins offer this working definition of understanding:

to understand is to make connections and bind together our knowledge into something that makes sense of things … to be able to wisely and effectively use-transfer-what we know, in context … we have a fluent and fluid grasp, not a rigid, formulaic grasp based only on recall and “plugging in” (McTighe and Wiggins 7).

Learning is about making connections! That’s as true in history, english, and math class as it is in the music room. When students encounter new material they need an established framework of understandings through which to process the literature. I wonder if our approach to ensemble rehearsal always produces such understanding of musical concepts?

A Few Scenes

Mrs. S comes into the room. The students are in their chairs ready to play. She announces the first piece and students shuffle through large folders full of music. She lifts her baton and begins the piece. The playing is… less than perfect. They have played this piece before, but it’s been a few weeks. Mrs. S keeps conducting, making comments to sections as they continue to play.

“Watch your F#’s, clarinets!” “Trombones! Make sure you get all the way out to sixth position!” “Keep the breath moving flutes!”

At the end of the piece, Mrs. S selects another score from her stack and repeats the process.

* * *

Mr. V sits at the piano as students stare intently at their score. “Everyone be quiet so the Tenors can learn their part!” He plunks out the line and asks them to sing along. They do with mixed success. He repeats the process and moves on to the next section.

* * *

Miss K has been working with her marching band a lot for the last few weeks! She made sure that the group bonded at camp in August, had a barbecue for all the parents in September, and even scheduled an extra morning rehearsal to make sure they were ready for the first football half-time show of the season!

English: Some marching bands have their member...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Each of these scenes might have a place. There are valid reasons why a music educator would find themselves in these situations at some point in their career! But I think they highlight the way the twin sins of curriculum design show up in ensemble rehearsal planning.

The Twin Sins of Design

McTighe and Wiggins identify the twin sins of design as activity-focused teaching and coverage-focused teaching. In the traditional school music ensembles, I have seen a lot of coverage-focused teaching whereas activity-focused teaching tends to show up more in elementary music classrooms and general music classrooms. In either case, I believe that music educators need to be more attentive to the learning needs of their students in planning musical experiences. It is not enough to merely prepare a concert of discrete pieces. There needs to be musical understanding that will prepare them for every concert thereafter! Likewise, it isn’t enough to teach elementary students a few fun songs to perform at a concert for their families, they need to have musical understandings and skills to take to their next musical experience!

UbD is an attempt to organize the design process to avoid the twin sins of design, and I think they have a lot to offer music educators as we attempt to best organize our classrooms for musical understanding.

UbD in the Music Ensemble

This post is the first in a series of blogs about using UbD in the music classroom. They will reflect my growing understanding of the UbD design process and music ensemble instruction. I hope to engage some readers with their thoughts about these topics! Especially if you’ve used UbD in your own rehearsal planning! Feel free to leave a comment or email me at james.jensen@cune.org

"understanding things is overrated"

“understanding things is overrated” (Photo credit: Geff Rossi)

Essential Understanding: Teaching for understanding in an ensemble builds transferability of musical concepts and enables students to perform music authentically at a high level in varying contexts.
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Moving updates!

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I’ve always loved coffee shops. Well, at least since I started drinking coffee in college (more out of necessity than pleasure or social necessity). During student teaching, the coffee shop in my small college town was my first destination before driving 30 miles on a country highway a few towns over. One morning, they were really excited to see me and they handed me a paper as I approached the counter with me on the cover conducting the band in their Winter Concert.

Needless to say, I knew I went there too often. But here I am, sitting in a coffee shop in Denver sipping black coffee and enjoying air conditioning that I don’t have to pay for.

Last week Thursday I moved back home with my parents from college and enjoyed a great family vacation. Now, life is back to normal. Except I’m now an unemployed college grad in a recovering economy. So not great. But over the last few days I’ve become really excited about what the future holds. Sure, it’s nerve-wracking and terrifying, but there’s a feeling like I’m supposed to be here.

I’m still looking for work in school districts in the area, but I’m ready to sub for the first 6 months to a year if that is necessary. Now that I’m moved, I’ll work on that reflection on the recent Music Educator’s Journal. I didn’t forget about it!

From the Stage to the Classroom: Reflection on Patty Oeste’s MEJ Article

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I’m not even sure we have one of these in this little college town!

I love getting mail! Unfortunately, 4 times out of 5 my mailbox is filled with credit card offers and flyers from the SuperSaver that got my address when I tried to win a big flat screen TV at their grand opening. Yesterday, though, I was happy to find this quarter’s edition of the Music Educator’s Journal published by NAfME. Usually, I scan through these and read one or two articles and let the rest sit, but this issue is packed full of great material and I’ve been totally absorbed in it for the last two days.

I loved Patty Oeste’s discussion of why she left the stage as a performer and became a music educator.

“Every student who enters my classroom is a story being written, and I am allowed to contribute a page or two. My pages are important, and I do not take this responsibility lightly. … I see the power of music in action every day. My students thrive. They learn to listen, and they learn to be flexible in their thinking. They take risks, and gladly. And what is truly amazing is that many students who enter my classroom don’t always shine in other classrooms. But, we can revel in their many successes in music. We laugh. We talk. We sing. We create.

I would have to say that I am not hear to teach music, but to surround my students with the beauty they may not find elsewhere.”

This description is exactly why I love teaching music! Teaching music is about giving students the chance to experience beauty that is not found elsewhere. We prepare them to encounter the world’s beauty wherever they might find it.

I also loved Ms. Oeste’s description of what leaving the performing stage was like:

“I found that the perfection and discipline demanded on stage is even more important in the classroom setting.”

Riga, Latvia after one of our last collegiate performances ever!

Riga, Latvia after one of our last collegiate performances ever!

The last five years I spent working toward my performance degree was not wasted. It trained me to be disciplined, to seek perfection, and to build an attitude of excellence that I will bring to my future classroom every day.

 

Live and In Person! The Transcendence of Experiencing Live Art

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Live and In Person! The Transcendence of Experiencing Live Art

Think of those experiences that have inspired you to want to be better, to be a part of something bigger and greater, to transcend limits and to touch, if only for a moment, something divine. Then start searching for ways to create those experiences for your students and inspire yourself in the process!

Live-and-In-Person

When I was touring with my college’s choir through Europe, I noticed that there was something different in the crowds (even if they were small) that gathered to hear us sing. There was a sense of reverence or attention that I didn’t really notice when traveling in the United States. I noticed it in Spain four years ago on the previous choir tour.

I believe that as a culture we have lost something. Now I know this sounds like a nostalgic plea for the good old days that I was never even alive to witness, but I really think we’ve lost our sense of awe and wonder in the face of great art. Not everyone, mind you, but a lot of us. I know that my experience of the transcendent nature of art is often stymied by my cynicism and envy of a performer’s virtuosity.

But every once in a while, we encounter that feeling again. For me, those moments have come when listening to a children’s choir in Naperville, Indiana, a symphonic band from the University of Nebraska – Omaha, or even while performing at a beautiful round wooden church in Riga, Latvia. The arts have the potential to give students experiences that they will not find if we do not offer them.

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Inside of the Jesus Evangelical Lutheran Church in Riga, Latvia. Taken by Holly Saalfield

It is my goal as an educator to first provide them with the learning environment for them to grow and build their skills as musicians and as human beings. Second, provide them with performance experiences as both performers and listeners so that they might share in the human experience of transcendent artistry. These two goals, artistic skill/perspective and artistic transcendence, are the ways in which the arts build self-knowledge, community, and growth that we want each student to find as they embark on their life as learners.

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Strawberries in Wittenberg

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20130610-120235.jpg

I’ve been home from a 24-day 8 country tour of Europe with the Concordia University A Capella Choir for about a week now. The picture above was taken in the Cranach Square in Wittenberg, Germany behind the apothecary where Lucas Cranach, a Reformation painter and engraver, worked and lived. I was enjoying some alone time and had been looking for gelato (okay, it’s just ice cream) when I saw these extra-red strawberries at the stand and just knew I needed to eat the whole package.

Sitting there in the sun, I thought about my five years as a student at Concordia. I especially considered my five years in the choir and my four years in the band, and the countless hours I spent practicing, in classes, and time spent with friends becoming the person and musician I am today.

I have now said goodbye to the band, the choir, and the school. I am officially an unemployed college graduate looking for work! Mostly, that’s absolutely terrifying. But I’m also excited for what comes next. The opportunities that await me to be the great teacher I know I am and find ways to continue building my personal and professional life.

Music and music education will continue to open doors and provide me with opportunities I never could have dreamed. Opportunities like traveling to Europe, meeting people from all over the world, and creating something beautiful that will stay with me for the rest of my life. And those experiences, international or not, are what I hope to provide to my students. Connecting with people, making beautiful music, and experiencing life in new ways.

Last night I got home from my last domestic tour with the Concordia University A Capella Choir! It was such an incredible opportunity to sing with this group for the last five years, and I cannot wait for our European tour next month.

Here’s us singing Fair Thee Well Love by James Mulholland with me singing the solo.

Also, if you read this, wish me luck as I interview with a school in Denver that I would really love to work at!

Fair Thee Well Love by James Mulholland

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We teach to cre…

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We teach to create a musical environment we lacked while growing up. We are here to give students the best foundations possible.

A “Ms. Alexander,” as quoted by this tumblr page!

I thought this would be a wonderful quote to return to my blog with! I have spent the last few months hectic with papers and assignments and tours and job applications. I’m looking forward to the end of the semester when I can sit back and reflect on the last five years of my college career and really begin to appreciate all that I have learned and the new person I have become.

I will attempt to update this blog more often (once a week, I hope) over the next month, but I leave for my penultimate choir tour on Wednesday so that may not happen!

I do have a job interview next week, so maybe I’ll post some of what I’ve been researching in preparation for that with my connections to music education.

Good luck as we all (teachers and pre-service teachers alike) finish out the school year!

Sugata Mitra talks about self-directed learning and students using computers to find information for themselves. He has a lot of very interesting ideas about how schools could be run and the overall purpose of education. I’m not sure I agree with his total goals, but there are certainly concepts that need to be incorporated into traditional education.

How can we better use student motivation and student-led learning in music education? When introducing instruments how much could students learn of the fingering on their own if given the chance? How much music theory could students learn on their own if given the chance? How much music history?

The closest thing I’ve seen in my own teaching experience is with planning learning activities using Understanding by Design.

Anyone have any other ideas about how to design learning experiences like this? I’m still not convinced that this is as hands-off as Sugata Mitra describes, but I’m sure I overestimate how much I really need to do in the classroom!

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud

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