Year 1
Three years ago, my co-teacher and I were both new to our school. My family was in the midst of dealing with a major medical crisis and my co-teacher, in her first year in elementary, had never taught recorder. Therefore, in order to keep things simple, we took the path of least resistance and minimal instructional thought. We chose the method book with the prettiest cover, that turned out to be quite good despite us and began on page one with no other plan. Our fourth and fifth-grade students carefully and faithfully slogged through the book. Due to the prolonged nature of the medical crisis in my family, the amount of prolonged periods of method book work was significantly more than I had ever planned or intended. Nevertheless, in the midst of tedious moments and minimal motivation, the method book was well designed and our students made progress, played well and were generally pleased with themselves. We were satisfied.
Year 2
When our fourth graders returned in the fall as fifth graders, without thinking too much of it, we picked up where we had left off with the intent of continuing as we had. It became clear rather quickly that we were going to have to rethink our instructional practice for recorder. Simply put, my sweet fifth graders who loved attending music class, had developed method-book fatigue and no longer enjoyed playing the recorder. While the thought of playing recorder had once filled them with excited anticipation, they now complained of being bored and were discouraged. We had to act quickly to resolve the problem or risk sending students to Jr. High ill-disposed toward playing an instrument.
As part of our motivational and instructional triage, we put away the method books entirely and spent time playing the recorder in a sort of game fashion using echo and flashcards. We also incorporated relays small group stations, and the opportunity to play other instruments as accompaniment all to disguise the fact that we were being very repetitive. This helped students internalize the mechanical procedural knowledge of playing the recorder (Bauer, 2014, p. 80). We also limited the time spent playing the recorder within a given class and included the recorder in small ways throughout more lessons in order to distribute practice (Bauer, 2014, p. 81). We also sought out a repertoire that not only supported our instructional goals but also had interesting or novel accompaniment tracks that would, "provide sonically rich environments" (Brauer, 2014, p.83). We noticed that students who reported playing a recorder at home were better prepared for new material, we encouraged students to purchase a second recorder, one for school and one for home. We sent home music with students to practice and saw a great improvement both in the quality of their playing and in their attitude toward rehearsal.
Year 3
Last year our district adopted a new Learning Management System (LMS) that enabled teachers to share content very easily and systematically with students and parents. In addition to our more thoughtful and engaging class time instruction, we were able to create a digital classroom. The power behind the digital classroom is that it allows students to access accompaniment files, notation, and instructional videos. Ideally, students can access the materials, practice at home and then upload an audio or video recording of their performance. Because students also used this platform in other content areas, it was not difficult for students to access or use. Nevertheless, in order to support students with limited technology access, we provided a paper version and invited them to record any assignment submissions as a phone message that would be recorded as voice mail. We launched the material, communicated with students and parents and waited to see what the response would be.
Out of one entire grade level of students who had access to the online recorder content, only about half accessed the material and only a few students submitted recordings or videos. Even though overall participation was comparatively low, we were encouraged by the quality of work we received and are looking for ways to foster better participation. In other content areas, students are motivated to use the LMS in order to complete assignments that are formally graded. As music specialists, we are not allowed to give grades for assignments done at home or online. Often when introducing an activity we had set up through the LMS, students would ask if the assignment was for a grade. When we explained that the work was voluntary, many students disengaged. Without a grade as motivation, we have to be creative.
Year 4 - Today
To that end, we are planning on emulating elements of Recorder Karate 1 and 2 by Barb Philipak from Plank Road Publishing in order to provide students with some extrinsic motivation (Bauer, 2014, p. 81). The LMS will assist us in scaffolding practice assignments through a modular organization that allows the teacher to set up the course so that students can only access material after completing the prerequisite tasks successfully. Feedback can be provided through both written rubrics as well as audio and/or video responses. Through video, I will be able to both respond, model and reteach for individual students (Brauer, 2014, p. 81). Meanwhile, the opportunity to earn a karate belt will support motivation until it evolves into its internal form (Brauer, 2014, p. 82). Based on the preliminary response to the belts themselves, I think that we will have significantly more students who participate in our digital recorder classroom simply because the students think the belts are cool.
Bauer, W. I. (2014). A conceptual framework for technology - Assisted music learning. In Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music (pp. 80-83). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
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ReplyDeleteHi Bonnie,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading about your experimentation with different ways of teaching recorder. I have taught recorder to fourth-graders using the Recorder Karate program for the past two years with great success! I would definitely recommend using the program, or using it as a guide to create your own karate belt system. The program has made teaching recorder very enjoyable for me. My students have loved earning the belts, and have been very motivated to learn the new skills and techniques needed for each song as it becomes increasingly more difficult. As you mentioned, the belts act as a form of extrinsic motivation. Bauer (2014) suggests that when students lack the level of intrinsic motivation needed, extrinsic motivation may help encourage students to practice. The extrinsic motivation reinforces a student's understanding that hard work pays off. Many of my fourth grade recorder students continued on to join Beginning Band in fifth grade. While I do not provide the same type of extrinsic forms of motivation that students experienced when learning to play recorder, many of my band students continued to practice as they had with recorder, and showed more signs of intrinsic motivation.
I was fascinated to read about the LMS that your district adopted. What a convenient way to flip the classroom and encourage some of the learning to take place at home! It is discouraging to hear that some of the students chose to not participate in the digital classroom once they learned that a grade would not be assigned to their work. I would be interested to see if they would be more willing to participate if they could earn belts for the videos or recordings that they submitted from home.
I had been inspired by Bauer's (2014) mention of creating videos that would model proper playing technique for students. While these videos would be extremely helpful for beginning band students, I could also see them being useful for recorder students. I would like to create a brief video that would model proper fingerings and rhythmic accuracy that would correspond to each of the songs for the Recorder Karate levels. While my school district does not have a LMS established, I could set up a Youtube channel with these videos, or I could post them on my classroom webpage. It sounds like you would be in an excellent position to add these types of instructional videos to the LMS content for students and parents.
Research also suggests that students prefer to practice with accompaniment (Bauer. 2014). I saw that you mentioned uploading accompaniment tracks to the LMS. Perhaps you could create some MIDI accompaniments for your own "Recorder Belt" songs using a notation software, or use chord progressions to create an accompaniment with Band-in-a-Box. These accompaniments could be made available to students through the LMS to access while they were practicing at home.