STANDARD 2: The teacher of PK-12 music has skills in creating, arranging, and improvising.
As a music teacher, creating, arranging, and improvising are key skills and elements to bring into the classroom. Not only will the teacher use these skills in developing lessons and activities for their students, the students will develop these skills. They will do activities using these skills that will help them to explore their ideas and grow as musicians.
Creating, arranging, and improvising are essential skills for every musician, let alone every music educator. In my time at Kansas State University, I continued to develop these skills and have found them extremely useful in the classroom. In my teaching, I have found that while these skills are necessary for any grade level, they are particularly useful at the elementary level. The lessons for elementary students provide opportunities for me to create rhythms and arrangements for my students that are comprised of melodies, body percussion, and instruments on occasion. An example using these concepts is a lesson plan I wrote for second graders centered around the nursery rhyme “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.” The focus of this lesson plan is developing student sense of time, adding movement and enhancing motor skills, and working to develop student improvisation skills. In addition, I am constantly working to improve my skills at arranging. Arranging requires understanding of all voice parts and instruments in terms of range, timbre, dynamics, and the like. I completed an arrangement of Billy Joel’s “Air (Dublinesque)” for advanced high school or early college students. The song was originally composed for piano and my arrangement would be suitable for a small concert ensemble. While not perfect, this serves as an example of my skill level, that I am ever working to improve.
The skills of creating, arranging, and improvising may seem advanced, but they are important for students to learn while becoming musicians. In my classroom, students will start learning these skills at the elementary level and work on them all the way up through their secondary education. Creating is one of the most fundamental skills in education. With help, students can create their own melodies, rhythms, and movements/choreography at a young age. As they grow, their creations will become more complex adding harmony and creating entire songs. I will assist students in creating such melodies and songs, as well as provide them the technological tools they need to compose electronically or record. Arranging is more difficult and less necessary in the primary classroom. Secondary students will have opportunities to learn about and hear a variety of instruments (due to both my ability to play a variety of instruments as well as my relationships with colleagues) so that they can best learn about arrangement. Arrangement skills will allow students to have more independence and choice in their music selection. As a class project for my secondary choral students, I will have them select a pop song they like, arrange it for choir, and perform it on our spring concert. Improvisation is another great skill that ties into other disciplines as well as music. Students will often be asked to give extemporaneous speeches or make things up on the spot for their other classes. My goal is to provide a safe and comfortable learning environment for students to become familiar with improvisation. These are skills that will not only benefit them in school, but in life.
As a music teacher, creating, arranging, and improvising are key skills and elements to bring into the classroom. The teacher will use these skills in developing lessons and activities for their students, and the students will develop these skills and apply them. They will do activities using these skills that will help them to explore their ideas and grow not only as musicians, but as people.
Creating, arranging, and improvising are essential skills for every musician, let alone every music educator. In my time at Kansas State University, I continued to develop these skills and have found them extremely useful in the classroom. In my teaching, I have found that while these skills are necessary for any grade level, they are particularly useful at the elementary level. The lessons for elementary students provide opportunities for me to create rhythms and arrangements for my students that are comprised of melodies, body percussion, and instruments on occasion. An example using these concepts is a lesson plan I wrote for second graders centered around the nursery rhyme “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.” The focus of this lesson plan is developing student sense of time, adding movement and enhancing motor skills, and working to develop student improvisation skills. In addition, I am constantly working to improve my skills at arranging. Arranging requires understanding of all voice parts and instruments in terms of range, timbre, dynamics, and the like. I completed an arrangement of Billy Joel’s “Air (Dublinesque)” for advanced high school or early college students. The song was originally composed for piano and my arrangement would be suitable for a small concert ensemble. While not perfect, this serves as an example of my skill level, that I am ever working to improve.
The skills of creating, arranging, and improvising may seem advanced, but they are important for students to learn while becoming musicians. In my classroom, students will start learning these skills at the elementary level and work on them all the way up through their secondary education. Creating is one of the most fundamental skills in education. With help, students can create their own melodies, rhythms, and movements/choreography at a young age. As they grow, their creations will become more complex adding harmony and creating entire songs. I will assist students in creating such melodies and songs, as well as provide them the technological tools they need to compose electronically or record. Arranging is more difficult and less necessary in the primary classroom. Secondary students will have opportunities to learn about and hear a variety of instruments (due to both my ability to play a variety of instruments as well as my relationships with colleagues) so that they can best learn about arrangement. Arrangement skills will allow students to have more independence and choice in their music selection. As a class project for my secondary choral students, I will have them select a pop song they like, arrange it for choir, and perform it on our spring concert. Improvisation is another great skill that ties into other disciplines as well as music. Students will often be asked to give extemporaneous speeches or make things up on the spot for their other classes. My goal is to provide a safe and comfortable learning environment for students to become familiar with improvisation. These are skills that will not only benefit them in school, but in life.
As a music teacher, creating, arranging, and improvising are key skills and elements to bring into the classroom. The teacher will use these skills in developing lessons and activities for their students, and the students will develop these skills and apply them. They will do activities using these skills that will help them to explore their ideas and grow not only as musicians, but as people.
ARTIFACT 1: Dublinesque Arrangement
The following is my arrangement of Dublinesque by Billy Joel. This was one of the first arrangements I have ever written, but it gave me the skills I will need to arrange pieces for my own classroom. This is an instrumental arrangement, which displays that I will not only be able to arrange for choirs, but also bands. In arranging this piece, I spent considerable time with it. It is important to understand the composer, their inspiration for writing the piece, and the movement of the piece itself. This allowed me to dive deeper into the music before and during the process of arranging the piece. This early experience to arranging has opened the door for other vocal and instrumental arrangements, as well as is a skill that I will continue to work on and develop in my years as an educator.
ARTIFACT 2: Music Technology Creation and Arrangement
This arrangement was created from the GarageBand software. As a teacher, it is important to have the knowledge and ability to use a certain program, application, or software before asking our students to use it themselves. This project allowed me to create an a cappella arrangement of one of my favorite pop songs in GarageBand. Creating songs or arrangements on technology is becoming more and more prevalent in our music classrooms. With the prevalence of 1 to 1 schools increasing, teachers are able to incorporate software and technology into the music curriculum like never before. Projects like this one allow students to experiment with different sounds and instruments, textures, balances, and more in order to create their own piece or an arrangement of one they love. This project allowed me to get more familiar with GarageBand and understand its uses and value in the classroom with an end goal in mind.
gb_final_the_rose.mp3 | |
File Size: | 5176 kb |
File Type: | mp3 |