Week 6 Blog Post Listening, Responding, and Interdisciplinary Connections

Music is a part of every-day life. Music is heard on television during programs or on commercials, played while shopping in stores, and even played in the waiting room of doctors’ offices. Many times we are not actively listening to the music that is playing. Active listening involves giving the music focused attention. Actively listening to music is a skill that can be taught. Teaching students how to actively listen can be a daunting task. Many students think that what they call “school music” is not good music because it is not what they typically listen to at home. Students in the younger grades tend to be more open to new musical experiences than students in the older grades. I believe if you start exposing students to various types of musical experiences when they are younger, it can help students stay more open-minded, or open-eared, when they get older.

          Some listening activities I have had success with involve many different movement activities as well as listening maps. Starting in kindergarten, I have students listen to songs that have leaps and skips in them. Typically, the first song I like to use about melody movement is based upon an animal and their movements, like songs about a monkey, frog, kangaroo, and other animals that jump and have quick movements. I have the students listen to a song and ask the students if the melody of the song stayed the at the same pitch or changed. I sing a short segment of the melody to refresh the student’s memory. Once the students have determined that the melody changes, I ask the students how does the melody change or move? I sing examples of a melody moving stepwise and another singing by leaps. Once it is determined that the melody moves by leaps, I ask the student what movements can represent the movement of the melody? When there is a leap, I have the students start in a squatting position and then leap up when the music leaps up. If the music leaps down, the students will drop to a squatting position. Next time I have students listen to a song that has leaps in them, the remember the movement of the first song and are able to recognize the movement much easier than before. This is done towards the beginning of the year. As the year goes on, I introduce songs from different cultures around the world. I like to use different movements to represent different musical elements.

          When students are in first grade, I introduce different listening maps for the students to follow. These maps have pictures and symbols to guide the students through the different aspects of a particular song. I usually project the listening map on the board and guide the students through the different pictures. Depending on what song we are working on, I may assign different movements to the different pictures to represent what is happening in the song. This may include things like squatting down and slowly standing up to represent a crescendo with the opposite representing a decrescendo. Another movement to represent stepwise motion and skipping movement would be to tiptoe when it is stepwise and skipping or taking giant steps for a skipping movement. This helps the students to associate the movement to what they hear happening in the song. When playing the next song, I ask the students what they hear and they are able to explain what they are hearing and they usually act out the movement along with it.

          As students get older, they typically do not like to participate in movement activities because of various reasons. In the past, some students have told me that doing the movement activities “are stupid”, or “that’s embarrassing”, and the one I heard the most, “my friends will make fun of me”. I try to encourage them that it is ok because everyone will be doing the moevements, but despite all my efforts, I can never seem to get everyone to participate. Today, all the schools have access to technology within the classrooms. Instead of trying to have the older students respond to music with movement, I can have the students look up different aspects of music and find examples. This could be accomplished through things like WebQuests or keeping a blog.

Working with teachers from other disciplines can help to increase understanding of a particular topic. For example, if you are working with a history teacher and the topic that the teacher is covering is the history of China. You can create different activities to expose students to different Chinese instruments and structure of Chinese music. You could assign students a specific composer or historical figure and create a profile on Fakebook for this person (Bauer, 2014). Another idea would be to have the students act like ethnomusicologist and conduct fieldwork, observations, journaling, conducting interviews, and participating in the cultures activities (Bauer, 2014). This would be accomplished by doing research on the computer and accessing sites like YouTube to find different musical events in that culture. Students can post their findings in a blog or create a PowerPoint presentation. In the past, I have worked with a science teacher to help reinforce different elements that were included with a sound unit. At this time, there was not technology integrated within the classroom yet. I had to research things on my own and present them to the class instead of having the students research themselves. I would love to have the opportunity to run the lessons again using technology as part of the experience and exploring of sound.

Bauer, W. I. (2014). Music learning today digital pedagogy for creating performing

and responding to music. New York, NY Oxford University Press.