I always have a group of
students who struggle to learn and understand the note names on the music
staff. No matter how many times I review it in class, stress its importance, or
even give pen and paper assessments there is always a group of students who
never seem to even try to learn this information. However, a recent web site
discovery led me to a classroom activity that has made it much easier to assess
students and hold them accountable for the information. MusicTheory.net. This site
allows the teacher to customize a note naming exercise to the specific needs of
individual students. I can assign either treble or bass clef, include ledger
lines, and even create separate exercises for all the different key signatures.
The class went to the
computer lab and I directed them to a web page I created listing all the
different exercise options in increasing order of difficulty. I told the
students that they must work through each exercise and that they could onely move
on to the next one once they had completed 60 questions with 90% accuracy. Once
they finished the third exercise they were to then raise their hand for me to
check their score. At that time they were allowed to move on to our school
library’s educational game site.
Many students just cruised
right through the assessments because the work we had done in the band room was
sufficient for them to master this skill. However, those students who had not
yet learned it were finally engaged in the process of understanding the
concept. They asked questions and worked hard to gain understanding so they
could move on to the next task. I believe that this activity forced many
students to engage in learning this skill knowing that they could move on until
they focused on it and demonstrated understanding. It probably didn’t hurt that
there was a fun activity at the end once they mastered all three assessments.
Here are the individualized
assessments I used. Students are to choose the one from each assessment that best fits the
instrument they play.
Assessment #1
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