Planning an Active Music Curriculum
I’ve said before that there is never a bad time to think carefully and creatively about your music curriculum. That’s certainly true. However, summer is a time many of us naturally feel drawn to plan for the upcoming year. As school is wrapping up across the country, educators are reflecting on their year and planning for even deeper learning in the fall.
At the time of this post, schools and communities have been completely reshaped to maintain student safety in the midst of Covid-19. Our curricula (including the active curriculum in The Planning Binder) have shifted to accommodate this new mode of instruction.
Now, as schools wrap up across the country, educators are in a position to plan for the upcoming year, and consider how they can facilitate even deeper learning… regardless of how instruction takes place.
In peace or in a pandemic, the key to deep musical learning is in active musical experiences.
Here are some ways to frame your curriculum around active music making. My friend, Anne Mileski, has also done some incredible work around this topic on her podcast.
Active vs Passive Learning
What is Passive Learning?
In passive learning, the student doesn’t really do anything other than take in information from the teacher.
Here are some important characteristics of passive learning:
How we learn:
In passive musical learning, the student learns by taking in information from the teacher. The students job is essentially to be a sponge, and receive knowledge.
Communication:
Communication is one-way. Learning happens as the teacher transmits information to the student. For example, in a lecture-style portion of a music class, the teacher might talk about a specific composer. The teacher is the source of information. The communication goes from the teacher to the student, not the student to the teacher, the student to the community, or the student to another student.
The student’s job:
The student’s role is to listen and follow directions. Passive learning environments have potential to be quite calm and orderly. That is because a successful student in a passive learning environment knows how to follow orders without question.
The most important person:
This kind of education has one central focus: the teacher. In passive musical learning, the teacher has the most important role in the classroom.
The result:
At the end of a passive learning experience, the result is that students know about things.
What is Active Learning?
When we compare passive learning with active learning, we see that the curriculum centers around the students, not the teacher.
Here are a few key differences in the student experience when learning is active:
How we learn:
In active musical learning, the student learns by constructing their own knowledge through intentional action. This is the active part of active learning. Students learn by doing things, not by having a teacher talk about things.
Communication:
There is communication on many levels. While there may be periods of direct instruction, the communication doesn’t stop there. Students communicate back to the teacher. Students communicate with each other in partners, through small group work, or whole class sharing. Students may communicate with the larger community. Students spend time communicating with themselves through self-reflection.
The teacher’s job:
Rather than transmitting knowledge, the teacher’s job in an active music learning environment is to craft intentional learning experiences. In these experiences, students discover musical concepts on their own. The teacher’s knowledge and skill level with the subject is still crucial! It’s imperative that the teacher have a deep contextual understanding of the subject matter so she can guide the learning activities.
The most important person:
This kind of education has one central focus: the student. Learning revolves around the student and how he or she is working through musical concepts.
The result:
In this type of model, students learn about music at a deep, conceptual level because concepts are made relevant. Musical concepts are actualized through intentional experiences. Students end up with a holistic contextual understanding of a musical concept, complete with what they know about it, and what they can do with that knowledge.
The curriculum in The Planning Binder follows the philosophy of active, student-centered music making. Click the button below to learn more!
Passive Musical Learning:
Knowledge comes from the teacher.
Active Musical Learning:
Students construct knowledge through intentional action.
Active Music Learning in General Music Curriculum
When we consider how to craft active learning environments, we often look to musical skills. This is a great place to start!
Musical skills are things like reading, writing, singing, playing, moving, and listening. There are ways to perform musical skills passively, and ways to perform them passively.
For example, in both a passive and active music room, students might sing songs.
In a passive classroom, that may look like students singing while looking at lyrics of a song on the board. It might also look like singing in a choir and following the director’s conducting for the correct dynamic level in the last eight measures.
There is nothing wrong with these types of experiences! However, with a few tweaks, these musical experiences can be more active and student-centered.
In an active musical classroom, students might sing a song while looking at the lyrics on the board, and identify the highest word in the fourth line of the song. In a choir, students might sing and vote on the most impactful dynamic level to use in the last eight measures.
Here are some other examples of musical skills that can be altered from passive to active learning:
Sing
Sing and look at lyrics of a song on the board
Sing and closely follow the conductor’s dynamic level
Play Instruments
Learn a pattern by rote and playing on barred instruments
Move
Copy the teacher’s dance motions, or copy the dance motions in a video
Read
Read patterns from the board that were written by the teacher
Memorize the names of lines and spaces on the staff
Write
Copy notation on a worksheet
Listen
Sit and listen to a piece of classical music
Sing
Sing and look at lyrics of a song on the board, and identify the highest word in the song.
Sing in a choir and vote on the most impactful dynamic level to use in the ending section
Play Instruments
Using a pattern learned by rote, make a variation by keeping the rhythm the same but changing the melody
Move
Students use as many levels as they need to move to the melodic contour
Read
Students take turns writing patterns on the board, the class reads students’ patterns
Figure out a mystery song on the staff by inner hearing the notation
Write
Students write down an original musical idea so they can remember it
Invent graphic notation for a specific rhythmic or melodic element
Listen
Sit and listen to a piece of classical music. When you know the form, work with a partner to show it through movement
Quick Checks for an Active Music Curriculum:
The ideas above might give a starting place for some active music experiences. You can also find fresh and engaging examples each new month inside The Planning Binder. Click the button below to learn more.
However, across the nation and across the world, music teachers at the time of this post find themselves needing to constantly re-invent their teaching in innovative ways.
As we move forward with constructing an active music curriculum, there are a few questions we can ask to self-check our work.
When we design learning activities, we can ask:
What is my ultimate goal as a teacher? Does this serve my ultimate goal?
What is the student doing in this activity?
What is the role of the teacher in this activity?
Moving Forward, Making Music
There will certainly be periods of direct instruction in our classrooms.
The purpose of active learning is not to replace the teacher. The purpose is to reconsider the role of the teacher in learning, and the ownership of the student in learning.
We want classrooms where the teacher equips students with the tools they need to succeed, crafts a structure in which learning takes place, and then gets out of the way.
