The event that I attended was Cultivating Singing in the Choral Ensemble and General Music Classroom with Robyn Reeves Lana, who is the conductor of the Cincinnati Children's Choir.
The first thing that stood out to me was the first activity. She passed around racquetball balls to each person in the room. The accompanist played the piece that the ensemble was working on, and we had to bounce the balls. First, we bounced the balls at the beginning of each measure (every 4 beats because we were in 4/4). Then we tried bouncing it every half note, then every quarter note. It is supposed to help students hear where the beats were in the music, as well as made them aware of the importance of starting together was. Even for the music major participants, it was sometimes difficult for all of us to hit the ball at exactly the same time on the ground. It was a good simulation for the difficulty in tonguing the beginning of a note completely together.
Another aspect that stood out to me was that Mrs. Lana demonstrated many different activities to use during class, but they were all different in learning styles. She used visual representations such as colored tights, kinesthetic learning with the racquetballs, and used demonstration for the aural learners. There were also exercises such as having the choir kids talk to words to focus on pronunciation instead of singing. There was so much variety in the activities and teaching styles that she used. I think that may be a key to having the ability to cater to all different learning styles of the children that are in her choir.
Another thing that stood out to me was audience's participation in the choir. Even though we were all not choir, we all participated in the singing the songs during the vocal portion. They passed around music and we all sang. It sounded good, granted all or at least most of us were music teachers or music majors. However, she demonstrated some of the activities before teaching us about them, and we followed what she was trying to get us to do, even though we didn't know what to do. She did not previously explain what she was going to do or what she was attempting to get us to do with the music. We just knew. My theory would relate back to conditioning. Although we did not have any explanation, that over the years we have learned what certain movements and expressions mean and we know how to manipulate the music compared to what we see. It has become natural for us.
I want to elaborate on the different activities that we participated in because I think it is directly applicable to my future as a music educator. A teacher can never have enough ideas about activities or ways to get students to understand and react to the music. The racquetball activity that I mentioned earlier was fun for me, and I am sure any age K-12 would enjoy it as well as understand that starting together is important and difficult. Even college ensembles have some trouble starting together. Another activity was the tights. She used colored tights to show the lines of the music and help shape the phrases. Each student would receive a stretchy band (colored tights) to sing with so they could physically feel the stretching of the musical line. This also demonstrated showing dynamics and style of the music. Another thing the lecturer used was an expanding/contracting ball to show dynamics. It also was a good visual example for breathing. When teaching breathing, it is important to teach students to breath using all 5 parts of their lung, breathing deep from the diaphragm, and not from their chest. She expands the ball to show the expansion of the lung as well as the opening of the throat. Another activity she used was assigning pitches to different hand signs, Then she would use a variety of different signs and have the kids sing the pitches associated with those signs. This was a good technique for kids learning to remember pitches. The guest speaker also used many other strategies that I thought were very applicable. Overall, I think that these strategies will be very useful in my future music classroom.
You briefly mention learning theory in relation to the singing. What kind of theory could you use to explain her other techniques: the ball, the tights, the bouncy ball?
ReplyDeleteDo any of her techniques help students understand the meaning of music? Is the purpose of her techniques to make a choir sound good, or to teach about music?
I think her other techniques could fall into 2 different theories- behaviorism and social cognitive theory. Behaviorism involves conditioning. I think that this is an example of conditioning because it is teaching the student how to shape a musical line or keep a beat through a different technique. Then reinforcement is used after the activity. For example, the students become conditioned in their musical reactions to certain motions, which is a lot of what the other activities are doing. On the other hand, these activities can relate to social cognitive theory maybe through modeling and/or vicarious learning.
DeleteI think the purpose of her techniques are to make her choir sound good. When one is working with young elementary aged children, they will not fully comprehend what they are learning. They are fully capable of achieving the required task, but they probably won't understand why or even how they are doing the task. That will develop later. It is not important to have an elementary choir sound perfect, but at that age, they will not really understand until maybe high school or middle school. For example, I knew how to play certain rhythms in middle school, but I did not understand how they fit into the meter until high school.Children will learn it very easily and it is important to not overload their brain with information they do not need to perform.