Technique File

1. MVP Most Valuable Point Most Valuable Point is one of my favorite Write To Learn strategies because it allows the student to chose the most essential point from the lesson and summarize it. The students will explain the point as well as why it is the most central idea to take away from the lesson. They can analyze their learning about the topic and record all of this in written form. My favorite aspect of this technique is organizing the students into pairs to share their interpretations of the most important topic. It would be interesting to see how students interact in this particular exercise when the answer is an all or nothing kind of thing. The students will either agree or disagree, which doesnt leave a lot of room for middle ground. This way, students can summarize (critical synthesis) and share their ideas with each other. You can ask students to group what they learned from their partnerships into themes to further reiterate the lesson. For example, in a lesson plan on Renaissance music, I included an article that covered the many traits of the Renaissance period. It would be interesting to ask the students to take away what they thought the MVP of the stylistic traits is. You could get a large array of opinions and the discussion that would ensue would be quite interesting to listen. There really isnt a quintessential point to the Renaissance style, but rather many points. This way, students could present their thoughts to each other and learn from other students about what they gathered from the lesson. 2. Admit/Exit Slips Admit and Exist Slips have essentially the same nature, the title just dictates when the technique will be used. Admit Slips require the students to write on an assigned topic upon immediate entry into the classroom. Exit slips are used at the close of each class period and ask the students to write on a different prompt. The prompts for Admit/Exit Slips must be thought provoking and critical to the students understanding and opinion forming. These techniques are great to simply get students writing in the classroom. They encourage critical thinking (with good prompts!) and allow students to synthesize their thoughts into one (hopefully) well-formed stream of consciousness. For example, in a lesson plan on musical theatre prompted students to think about what they might do if a program were considering getting rid of their musical theatre content because of the effects it has on young singers voices (exit slip). This was a good way to gauge the temperature of the group of students How do they feel about our current musical theatre program? What kind of knowledge do they have in regards to vocal fatigue and musical theatre? Do they know the risk? Etc.) I asked what their plan of action might be if they

were faced with this decision. This would also help me see how they perceive our own program and check for any good ideas about how to encourage current students to get excited about what we do. 3. Persuasion Writing Frames Writing frames are used to help students organize and conceptualize their thoughts and opinions in a structured format. Specifically, the persuasion writing frame could help in a music classroom because it would allow students to share their own opinions and form arguments to inform other students about their decisions. A persuasion writing frame requires the student to promote a point of view using a thesis, argument for the POV, and summary of information and facts. In music, there are several controversial issues that can be argued with a frame such as this. For example, in a lesson plan on musical theatre technique, the students read about Classical and Musical Theatre-style singing. A group of students could present an argument for Classical singing, stating the health benefits and its popularity among teachers, while another group can present the benefits of musical theatre expression and performance. Both are valid techniques in music, and both can be employed successfully in the classroom. We could let the class decide which they like better depending on the writing frame presentations of each student. 4. Prediction Paragraph Frame Prediction Paragraph Frames are especially useful in a music classroom because music (as a subject) has a lot of preconceptions that come through media and culture. A Prediction Paragraph Frame is a writing frame that asks the students to make predictions about what they think they will learn about a particular subject. This includes a fill-in-the-blank portion that spells out the topic and motivations behind studying it, and a paragraph in which the student would predict what they would learn about the subject along with any preconceptions they have. For example, a lesson I wrote about musical genres would employ this technique quite well. In the lesson, we read about opera and the implications in carries on musical singing. The students could write what they predict we will learn about opera (technique, application, validity, etc.) and write about how they think it can be applied in our classroom. 5. Thinking Aloud Thinking Aloud is a useful technique when covering a subject that is important to the students understanding, but might involve words or concepts that currently escape the students knowledge. Thinking Aloud is a modeling of

critical processing skills, essentially showing the students how an educated person thinks. Its exposing the inner dialogue of the reader. Its important to show the students this process because it demonstrates that everyone is accountable for their learning, and that teachers are not simply apt to knowing things. For example, in a lesson plan about Renaissance music, I have a mental model (Thinking Aloud) planned to explain the first paragraph of the content article. The article uses words like sacred, secular, counterpoint, and canzone to explain some of the material. This Think Aloud can help students use context clues and previous knowledge to read the article on their own, but make the right decisions as to definition. In this instance, where there is a large amount of technical terms that could trip up a lot of students and discourage them from reading further, the Thinking Aloud approach is preemptive. It gives students the tools to learn things using their own knowledge. This makes significant connections in the brain that allows students to retain. 6. Concept Mapping A concept map can be used to help students understand relationships between various musical concepts and how they connect in significant ways. When concept mapping, a student will begin with an original topic (usually something broad and encompassing), and from that concept branch off into several subtopics that support its reasoning. A topic might begin broad, but with every layer and bit of information it reduces down to bare terms that associate. For example, in a lesson plan on Musical Math, students can create concept maps that cover the subject of 6/8 meter. The title 6/8 Meter would go in the middle, and branching out from that, the student could potentially write things like Has a duple feel/Contains 6 eighth notes/Dance meter, and from those pieces, they could connect other meters that relate (like 8/8, 12/8, etc.) The Concept Map could make the essential connections in their knowledge that will help them remember the information. 7. Frayer Model The Frayer Model is one of my favorites when it comes to knowledge association in graphic organizers. It consists of a vocabulary word or concept essential to the content, a definition, information about the word (i.e., where it comes from, context of said word, etc.), examples, and non-examples. The four accompanying pieces of information are essential to understanding the concept as a whole. I particularly think that finding examples and non-examples of the concept are important because it allows your brain to make references. For example, in a Musical Math lesson, students are writing a lot about vocabulary and concepts that are essential to their understanding of the topic. A

Frayer Model could be created to reinforce the concept of asymmetrical meter signatures. The words Asymmetrical Meters could go in the middle. The students would write the definition, facts about the concept, and then find examples of asymmetrical meters in their own music. Non-examples could be any notion of symmetrical meters (like 4/4, 2/4, etc.) All of these aspects along with the concept help to reinforce the topic. When they encounter asymmetrical meters in the future, they will know how to read them, and thus, how to perform them. 8. List-Group-Label List-Group-Label is perhaps my favorite graphic organizer because it allows students to theme their thoughts and collaborate. It is yet another technique that allows students to make connections and bring important words and concepts to life. Before reading or learning a specific topic, students will brainstorm all the words they think relate to the stated concept (LIST) Students should write all of their thoughts down, but not be evaluated on the words they have come up with. Next, students will divide into small groups and cluster all of the words they came up with into groups of relation (GROUP). Last, students will suggest titles or names for the groups of words they formed and share what they found (LABEL). This is such a helpful tool in a classroom with limited resources because every student and group of students can work from one concrete list of terms. Music classrooms especially benefit from this technique because students often think of unique concepts to associate with topics. Music is for everyone, thats why students can collaborate easily with it. For example, in a musical theatre lesson, students learn about why musical theatre vocal production is different from other productions. It would be fun to record every word that students think of in relation to the broad term of Musical Theatre (there are so many concepts!). We could then group the words into style traits, examples, genres, techniques, musical aspects, etc. The students would have fun organizing their words into groups and sharing their thoughts on why certain things should be grouped together.