Officer Comments President Elect Jeff Rice
It’s Not All About Me!
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hat is a phrase I have been saying to myself recently. As I work each day with the most wonderful high school students in the world, I have to stop myself frequently and be reminded of who the center of my attention in the classroom is each day. In the teacher appraisal process, much weight is placed on the learner being the central focus of instruction. Our appraisers are more interested in how our students are responding than what we as teachers are doing. We can prepare and execute our most creative lesson plan, but if our students do not respond, we have not done our job. Recently, my PDAS appraiser and I had a healthy discussion on my premise that choral music instruction is intrinsically learner-centered because the learner/performer must be physically and mentally involved for good singing to occur. In my opinion, there are few activities that are more learner-centered than skilled, refined choral singing. The singer/student is creating music through a complex series of mental, physical, and spiritual processes that result in accurate, healthy, expressive singing. This requires continual evaluation as the singer moves from note to note and word to word while constantly making fine tuning adjustments to what he is hearing around him. In my appraiser’s opinion, as long as the teacher is directing the instruction, it is not the highest level of learner-centered education. I have come to realize that we are both right and that there must be a balance between the two. It is true that some of what we do in the choral classroom is teacher-directed with an expected student response. Most of the time we select choral literature and sight reading curriculum, and students are expected to respond with correct pitches, rhythms, phrasing, dynamics,
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tone quality, etc. As choral conductors we are trained with a predetermined sound of what we want to hear from our students. To achieve that sound our instruction usually consists of modeling or describing the desired sounds and behaviors, then expecting students to respond with the sound that was pre-set in our mind. If we stop there, we are leaving the learner out of the process to a certain degree. Although we should not abdicate the teacher’s role in the choral classroom, it is not a bad thing to allow our students to make some decisions that determine the outcome of our instruction. How can you begin to make this a part of your daily instruction process? Here are some ways you can make your choral classroom more learnercentered: Allow the class to vote on a musical selection for a concert. (Of course, you can make sure all the choices are acceptable and appropriate for the choir.) Better yet, perform a student composition! Allow student leaders to select excerpts of a piece for rehearsal. This can also be set up ahead of time to ensure success for all. Choose a student to give the starting pitch for sight reading exercises. Discover which student may have perfect pitch! Allow students to choose which piece needs the most attention on a given day. This can be a great way to extend instruction when you feel you have met your objectives for the day, but still have 10 minutes left in class. Assign small ensemble groups for rehearsal. Allow one student to be the conductor of the ensemble as they perform musical excerpts for the class. Ask each group to critique the other groups.
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One tool I use to create learnercentered lesson plans is the “Five E” method prescribed by my campus principal. The following is a typical lesson plan template for my classes. As you will see, it is a very broad form allowing freedom to insert titles of particular vocal exercises, sight reading material, and choral literature we are working on at that time. TEXAS√SINGS!
Engage: 1. Appropriate music selection playing as students enter the room. 2. Group sight reading assignment instructions on board. 3. Vocal exercises/warm up. Explore: 1. Large/small group participation in sight reading curriculum material. 2. Large/small group participation in choral rehearsal techniques using performance curriculum materials. 3. Large/small group exploring vocal skills including breathing, tone quality, range, and vowel shape/ placement. 4. Sight reading unison lines using Kodály hand signs. 5. Vocal skills — posture, breathing, tone quality. Breathing exercise — counting in/out, percussive consonant drills. Explain: 1. Immediate feedback from the teacher based on student performance of sight reading curriculum material. 2. Teacher models correct pitch, interval performance, and rhythmic patterns. 3. Immediate feedback from teacher based on student performance of choral rehearsal techniques. 4. Teacher explains and demonstrates appropriate and necessary choral techniques including dynamic contrast, phrasing, intonation, diction, expression, textual significance, vowel unity, vocal color matching, and historical/composer information (composer/musical style). 5. Immediate feedback from the teacher based on student performance of vocal technique. 6. Teacher explains and demonstrates appropriate vocal techniques including posture, diaphragmatic breathing, tonal resonance, tone quality, vowel placement, and vocal anatomy. Elaborate: 1. Students chant, then audiate, then sing sections of sight reading material to apply knowledge, refine skills, and deepen understanding of reading musical notation. 2. Students repeat sections of choral performance material to apply Winter 2011