Blog 8: Strategies to Develop Deeper Level Understanding In Students

The authors kick off chapter 6 of The Music and Literacy Connection with a valuable discussion on memory. They tell us that according to statistics, 99 percent of sensory information is discarded as soon as it enters the brain (Hansen, Bernstorf, and Stuber 89). They further state, "So, in order for us to retain information, it must be reinforced by further experience and or maintained by interest spurred with emotion or meaning" (Hansen, Bernstorf, and Stuber 90). When I think back to my years of musical training, I can confidently say that the most important lessons and skills I acquired were through emotional experiences. For example, I did not learn how to perform by being lectured by my private teacher on how a performer should act on stage. Rather, it was through the nerves, anxiety, and thrill of actually being on stage and performing that I learned how to be a performer. As an educator, it will be so important for me to find ways to provide emotional contexts for learning for my students, and this chapter outlines a few ways I can do so. 

Something that the authors took time to discuss is the strong connection between strategies used in the reading classroom and strategies use in the music classroom. These strategies are specifically targeted towards developing long-term memory in students. This was touched on in recent chapter, but not as strongly as it was addressed in this chapter. Hansen, Bernstorf, and Stuber state, "If our goal is to foster understanding and love of music, perhaps we can borrow instructional strategies from those who teach reading comprehension" (Hansen, Bernstorf, and Stuber 91). Before I go on to discuss some of these strategies, I would like to say that I really appreciate how the authors state that our primary goal should not be to teach students how to play music, but rather, to teach students to love music. I have met so many educators who believe that teaching musical technique is the most important thing. However, in my experience, I have found that teaching this way can often cause students to become bitter towards music. If music is about learning technique, then learning can become dry, frustrating, and centered around perfection. However, I deeply resonated with the authors as they stated that our goal should be to help students foster an understanding and love of music.

One of the long-term memory strategies they gave focused on finding the main idea. In an English class, this would look like finding critical facts and details in a narrative or expository literature. However, this can be applied to music by challenging students to find themes, melodies, or motifs through repeated rhythmic and melodic patters, tonal centers, and so on. By challenging students to do this, we are greatly increasing their musical literacy. In fact, we could teach the idea of themes and motifs to students by comparing them to a story. I could explain to my students that just as stories have main ideas, characters, and themes, music is the same way. Even better, I could first give my students a short story about music (maybe even about the music they are currently learning), and ask them to identify the main ideas and facts in that story. After we discuss the story, I could then play them a piece of music or have them play through the music and discuss the "main ideas" in the music. There were many other strategies given and many other ideas I had centering around those strategies, but this was idea I thought would be readily applicable and easy to incorporate in almost any type of music classroom. 

The authors also discussed how these strategies related to standards. Standards have been one of the hardest things for me to learn and deal with in my quest to be a future music educator, so I appreciated seeing distinct connections between strategies and the different standards they align with. For example, one of the standards they highlight is the National Core Music Standards, Grade 5, Anchor Standard 2a, which is to organize and develop artistic ideas and work. This would include activities like demonstrating selected and developed musical ideas for improvisations, arrangements, or compositions to express intent, and explaining connection to purpose and context. This parallels with the given strategy to "Retell" the music. Just as an English teacher might prompt their children to respond to a story by retelling it in their own words or acting it out with their classmates, a Music teacher could challenge their students to retell a piece of music by describing an image that the music causes them to think of and by improvising to an already existing melodic or rhythmic motif presented in the music. I had always thought that meeting standards meant formal assessments that took the "fun" out of learning, but this made me realize how creative and fun I can be in making sure my students meet standards while learning.

Some of the other strategies for teaching a deeper understanding of music were inquiry, modeling, building a vocabulary, and cooperative learning, but I would like to focus in on vocabulary. One of the strangest things I feel I deal with when teaching students is when I ask one of my older students who has been playing music for many years to define a simple, musical term, and they stumble over their words in an attempt to define it. I do understand that many musical terms are more abstract than terms taught in other types of classrooms (like science or math classrooms), but that does not give musicians an excuse to not understand how to use and define them. One clear sign of literacy within a subject area is their ability to fluently use the vocabulary that accompanies that subject area, and I often find that musicians lack this. They may know how to see a term and play it, but they also need to know how to define it and use it in conversation.

This chapter gave some very good ideas for enhancing students' musical vocabulary. One of the ideas I made note of was to keep word journals where students are encouraged to write down and explore words that interest them specifically, as well as words they really do not understand. If I were to have my students do this, I would be able to read through these journals on a weekly basis and pick out which vocab words my students were struggling to understand. I could then slightly adjust my lessons to incorporate further learning of these words. Another idea was to simply use musical language as I teach lessons about music. This was convicting. Even when I am teaching violin lessons where I am proficient in violin vocabulary, I often find myself shying away from using certain terms, simply because I am afraid my student will not know what the term means and become intimidated. However, this simply gives them room to ask more questions, which they should be doing anyways. I could also use a term and kindly ask them if they are familiar with it. Either way, I need to be using my knowledge of music (and violin) vocabulary to its fullest potential while teaching lessons. This way, my students will be able to understand different terms within specific musical contexts, which can essentially help them to learn the terms on a deeper level. 

Overall, this was one of my favorite chapters I have read thus far. I feel as if the ideas presented readily encompassed practical ways I can enhance my students' musical literacy. The ideas caused me to consider my current teaching techniques, as well as helped me to devise specific ways I will structure future curriculum. Not only that, but I felt as if every idea was so creative. This chapter not only gave me ideas on how to better teach my students to deeply comprehend music, but it made me very excited for the day I get to do so.