Reflection, Week 6

            I am quite intrigued by ways to increase listening skills through technology use. Throughout this course, I have stumbled across several resources that encourage the use of listening guides or charts (see one prominent article at the end of this blog). This week, Bauer mentioned the use of listening guides to “help direct students’ attention to important aspects of a composition such as its form, melodic contour, texture, and orchestration” (2014, p. 113). At first, I imagined how these guides might be useful in a general music setting, but I quickly transferred its use into my classroom, and I see it as a great resource for myself and for my students! In my classroom, I could create my own guides using Google Docs, allowing the documents to be saved, printed, and/or projected on a screen. This process would also allow me to study the score of the piece, thus preparing me to teach it to my students. Students could follow the guides while listening to a publisher’s recording or a YouTube performance of the tune before reading through the piece themselves, allowing them to become somewhat familiar with it. In later rehearsals, after we have worked on the piece for some time, we might reference the listening guides again to clarify entrances or form, among other concepts.

            With so many students being visual learners, listening guides and charts are excellent resources to help them understand how a piece of music works. This could be especially useful in a middle school classroom, where students tend to be introduced to more literature than in general music. Charts would not have to be elaborate at first, as students may need time to adjust to the new way of learning. For example, I might just include form at first to allow the students to pay attention to patterns. Later, more concepts could be added, such as instrument entrances. Bauer discusses the difference between declarative knowledge (knowing something) and procedural knowledge (being able to do/perform something) in this chapter, which led me to ask How do we teach so that students are constantly combining declarative and procedural knowledge? (2014, p. 115). By including these visual guides in my classroom, I believe more students will increase their declarative knowledge about how music works, leading them to more accurately perform a piece of music (procedural knowledge). I believe the two types of knowledge go hand-in-hand, so finding ways to increase what students know about music and/or performance should help us to increase how they perform music.

Here is an article explaining how the Toronto Symphony uses listening guides at their concerts: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2016/may/how-the-toronto-symphony-orchestra-uses-graphic-design-to-guide-its-audiences-though-its-music/?platform=hootsuite

Bauer, W.I. (2014). Music Learning Today: Digital Pedagogy for Creating, Performing,

            and Responding to Music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Sinclair, M. (May 26, 2016). How the Toronto Symphony Orchestra uses graphic design

            to guide its audiences through its music. Retrieved on August 11, 2016 from

            http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2016/may/how-the-toronto-symphony-
            orchestra-uses-graphic-design-to-guide-its-audiences-though-its-
            music/?platform=hootsuite