Assessment and Instructional Design with Technology

     This week I read chapter 6, Assessment for Learning Music (Bauer, 2014), This chapter in Music Learning Today, addressed the importance of assessing students. Bauer states, "Assessment is an essential aspect of teaching and learning.....it also informs the design of instruction and can direct adjustments of the specific teaching and learning strategies that are used over time" (p. 131).  Next week,  I will be administering my school districts Music Assessment with my third, fourth, and fifth grade students.
    The Music Assessment is important, in my school district because it  measures the growth of my students musical knowledge. I do not view that the assessment is for my students only, it is also assessing my instruction. The students will be assessed on knowledge of basic musical skills and concepts: Form, Meter, Tonality (Major/minor), music symbols, treble clef pitch names, movement of notes (same, step, skip, octave), melodic identification, rhythmic identification, instrument families, instrument sounds identification, and musical styles. A total of thirty multiple questions, with a CD recording of the test being read out loud, and musical examples being played.

    My school district track all students scores through Edusoft.  Edusoft is a web based student assessment platform. It stores student data that is retrievable from year to year.  Last year my fourth grade students improved their test scores by 80% from when they took the assessment as third graders. This year's Student Learning Goals (SLGs)  I projected that my fifth grade students (last year's fourth grade students) will increase their scores by 90%. This is a huge step for my students and for myself. By using my district's Music Assessment to measure my students growth and Edusofts web platform, I am measuring my effectiveness in planning and my instruction along with my students scores. My students' data is then used for my end of year evaluation.

Portfolios
     One assessment that I would like to implement in my classroom is portfolios. The use of a working portfolio would be useful to show students their growth over time. It would help students to look back and reflect what they have learned, how they applied it, and would help them to review for the Music Assessment. I enjoyed reading about the use of Electronic Portfolios, I believe this would encourage my students to write more, My students who are on an Individualized Education Program (IEP) use a small typing device called Fusion. When students use their Fusion, they type their writing assignments, then they print their work, and hand their assignment in to their classroom teacher. The use of Google Doc would be an excellent resource for my students to use. All of my students have a school google email account, and they can share their electric documents with me.  On Monday, April 27, 2015 for the music in service that I will be attending will be looking at how to implement using Google Drive and Google Docs.

      I use  rubrics that are created by a team of music educators when I assess my students.  I am required to do three formal assessments within each tri term.  I must use two rubrics from the district and one that I make.   I also use exit tickets to inform me of  students who are not understanding certain concepts.

Instructional Design:

     In chapter 7, Instructional Design, Bauer, discusses the effectiveness of instructional design.  In my school district we have an elementary curriculum and instructional design team. These teachers help design activities, rubrics, and collect data to see if the music assessment and the general music curriculum is effective, or does it need to be improved.  The curriculum team is open to any music educator in the district to provide ideas, and feedback to help improve instruction and assessment. Even though the curriculum team had found issues with in the assessment itself, the team is open to all ideas.  The curriculum team would like to have the assessment to be computerized, instead paper and pencil. In two weeks, I will be viewing a new Music Assessment document that will be implemented next school year. Unfortunately the assessment will not be computerized, but it will address misleading questions, and misleading listening examples. Plus, it will be written in Spanish and in English along with a CD that will be in Spanish and in English.
Project Based Learning

    Reading about Project Based Learning and how using WebQuest as a format has been fascinating to me.  When I was teaching middle school choir, this would have been beneficial to my students. For example I could have designed a project that was about Solfege and the history of how the solfege system came about. Or, I could have created a WebQuest about a composer, or musical style. My mind thinks "Oh the possibilities!!"I believe my students would enjoy this activities of learning together and benefiting from team work.

I am looking forward to see where my creativity will take me in creating a WebQuest for my students to use.

Bauer, W. I. (2014),  Assessment for Learning Music. In Bauer, W. I. (2014). Music learning today:
     Digital pedagogy for creating performing and responding to music (pp.130-144).  New York:
     Oxford University Press.