Jessica Dalrymple

12 December 2016

ME 161-01 Art of Teaching Music I

Philosophy of Music Education

I grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts and attended Wellesley High School, which is

known for its excellent academics and performing arts department. The choral department is

made up of five choral ensembles and are all conducted by Dr. Kevin McDonald. In high school,

I was a member of Song Sisters, which was the all-female chorus, and the Keynote Singers,

which was one of the two select ensembles.

The Wellesley High School choral department is known as one of the best choral

departments in Massachusetts. Each November, Dr. McDonald sends 20 people to MMEA

Eastern Senior Districts auditions, and more than half of the people he sends are accepted. Some

people are even recommended to audition for the All-State chorus and successfully audition into

that chorus. There have also been some former members of the choral department that have been

invited to audition for and sing with the All-Eastern Chorus that performs at the NAfME Eastern

Divisional Conference every two years.

When people did not successfully audition into the Senior District chorus, it was most

often because of low sight-reading scores. Although the choral department was known for its

excellence in musicianship, more than half of the students in all five of the choirs combined did

not know how to read music. Those who did know how to read music learned by playing an

instrument and/or being a part of band, orchestra, or chorus. Dr. McDonald recognized that this

was a problem in the department, yet it seemed as though he seldom tried to adjust the

curriculum to fit the needs of the majority of the students.

 In addition, Dr. McDonald never had his choruses do sight-reading exercises of any kind

during class meetings. About two weeks before Senior District auditions day, he had workshops

after school where he gave us various sight-reading exercises and scored our performance using

the official MMEA Eastern Senior Districts rubric. Many students had after school conflicts

such as sports practices and play rehearsals, so they were unable to go to the after school sessions

most of the time. This resulted in them being somewhat unprepared for Senior Districts

auditions, and their scores showed it. Each spring, when students can audition into the select

ensembles for the next academic year, they are required to sight-read a melody that is eight

measures long as part of their audition. How are students supposed to successfully complete that

part of their audition if they get almost no practice during the academic year?

While taking Art of Teaching Music I at Westminster Choir College this past semester, I

have learned a great deal about different teaching approaches, and I have been thinking about

how I can use these different approaches in my future classroom. In Zoltn Kodlys method,

conversational solfege introduces rhythm and tonal symbols through rote teaching. The teacher

will speak or sing patterns using the different syllables and the students will repeat them back.1

Music psychologist educator Edwin E. Gordon made the use of James Froseths beat-based

rhythm syllables more popular and incorporated them into his Music Learning Theory. 2 I plan to

incorporate both Gordons theory and Kodlys method into my teaching of music literacy and

sight-singing when I become a music teacher and create my own curriculum.

1 Kodly Process. (2016, November 27). Unpublished typescript, Westminster Choir

College of Rider University, Princeton, NJ/USA.
2 Dalby, B. (n.d.). The Gordon Institute for Music Learning. The Gordon Institute

for Music Learning, 5-6. Retrieved from http://www.giml.org

 Even though music teachers may agree that music literacy and sight-reading are

important, very little classroom time is devoted to sight-reading.3 As a future music educator, I

will make sight-singing and music literacy an essential part of my curriculum. I will incorporate

different parts of Kodlys method, such as using the Curwen hand signs to demonstrate pitch

relationships, to help students learn the notes of a scale, and to teach them solfege. After the

students successfully learn the hand signs, I can then move forward to teaching them about

whole steps, half steps, and how to build a major scale.

In addition to teaching my future students melodic and tonal sight-reading, I will also

teach them how to rhythmically sight-read. Edwin E. Gordon believed that there were different

levels of audiation and created an entire teaching method based on this theory.4 Audiation is

hearing and comprehending sound in ones head (inner hearing), even when no sound is present.4

Gordons Music Learning Theory approached teaching music by having students learn it like it

was a new language.4 I plan to take that same approach when I teach my students about rhythm

sight-reading and will use this process:

1. I will speak a rhythm on a neutral syllable or clap one and I will ask my students to repeat

the pattern back to me.

2. After clapping or speaking the pattern, I will explain what types of rhythms were featured

in the pattern (i.e. quarter notes, eighth notes, half notes, rests, etc). If I were to review

any rhythms, I would then talk about time signatures.

3
Norris, C. (2004). A Nationwide Overview of Sight-Singing Requirements of
Large-Group Choral Festivals. Journal of Research in Music Education,
52(1), 16-28. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3345522
4
Holcomb, A. (n.d.). Literacy Thoughts [PDF]
 3. I will show students what the rhythmic pattern I either clapped or spoke looks like using

stick notation. Later in the curriculum, I will begin to teach the students how to write

rhythms on a staff.

In 1998, S. Demorest examined individualized sight-reading testing to see whether it was an

effective teaching strategy for sight-reading.5 Results from the study showed that students who

were individually tested from time to time scored significantly higher than students who were

tested in a group.5 Because sight-singing is a crucial part of music education1, when I teach

sight-reading to my future students, I would like to have each student in the choral department

complete one sight-reading exam every two months.

In my Introduction to Musicianship lab every Tuesday, I am quizzed on keyboard skills, and

rhythm and tonal sight-reading. Because I did not have a lot of practice with sight-reading

during high school, that portion of the quiz was harder for me in the beginning of the semester.

As the semester continued, my sight-reading has greatly improved, and I have recently been

earning proficient grades on all of my quizzes. I found that having weekly sight-reading exams

in my Introduction to Musicianship class really helped me improve my sight-reading skills. I

hope that my future students would greatly benefit from having periodic exams because I believe

that they will become better musicians.

One of my Art of Teaching Music I professors, Dr. Al Holcomb, told us during class one day

that, The primary purpose of assessment is to improve teaching and learning.6 By assigning

these periodic sight-reading quizzes, I can not only track student growth by gathering evidence

from test to test, but I can also evaluate my teaching of the subject matter, and what I can

5 Henry, Michele L. The Use of Targeted Pitch Skills for Sight-Singing

Instruction in the Choral Rehearsal. Journal of Research in Music
Education, vol. 52, no. 3, 2004, pp. 206217. www.jstor.org/stable/
3345855.
6 Dalrymple, Jessica M. Class Notes. Dec. 6, 2016
improve upon, or keep the same. I will also ask for student feedback after each quiz by asking

them if they think they have improved since the last quiz and if they are still struggling with

certain aspects of sight-reading. By doing this, I am getting feedback from the students to see if

there are things that they would like to work on during class. The students feedback will allow

for more student leadership6, and I want to create a student-centered learning environment in my

classroom.

When I begin my career as a music educator, I want my students to walk out of my

classroom at the end of a given academic year knowing how to read music. I hope that by

teaching them to rhythmically and tonally sight-read, they become more confident in their ability

to sight-read and learn music on their own. I also would love to see my students be successful in

auditioning for other outside of school chorus and/or MMEA Eastern Junior or Senior District

Festival, All-State, and All-Eastern choruses partly because of their excellent ability to sight-

read. Sight-reading is one of the most important parts of music education1 because students learn

pitch and rhythmic accuracy, pitch relationships, and solfege using the Curwen hand signs. I

hope to not only cultivate excellent musicianship in the choral department at my future school,

but to also develop a love for music among my students because they will have confidence in

their ability to read music.