Abstract
In this article, an approach to unit plans using essential questions is described within the context of general music education and illustrated in the unit Repetition and Contrasts: Understanding Music Through Form. This unit is founded on the essential question: As musicians, how do we use form to organize and understand music? Learning guideposts provide direction and impetus for the essential questions on which the unit is founded. Learning guideposts detailed for this unit include content and materials, processes, culminating project/performance, and propensities. Summaries of lessons illustrate how the ideas presented in this framework transfer to daily instruction. Student assessment is embedded within lessons from multiple perspectives denoted as assessment for learning, assessment as learning, and assessment of learning.
Keywords
There are several approaches music teachers may use when creating units for learning. Many educators view music teaching as helping students acquire musical skills in an ever-increasing spiral of difficulty. The instructor plans aural experiences, directs students to the new element in the learning sequence, and then supplies students with experiences in which to apply new knowledge. This approach is effective in teaching students about the building blocks of music, especially ideas associated with the form and function of pentatonic and diatonic scales, the elements of rhythm (quarter notes, eighth notes, etc.), and the functions of harmonic structures in Western diatonic music. Units sometimes reflect a thematic approach in which lessons are structured around a series of topics appealing to the students’ interests. For example, students in Grade 1 may engage in a unit on bears that includes playing games and singing songs that feature this animal. Older students may be introduced to a particular geographic region through folk material—for example, songs of the prairies. Throughout the past 20 years, teachers have used the National Standards for Music Education to guide students’ musical experiences in a number of areas: 1. Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music; 2. Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music; 3. Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments; 4. Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines; 5. Reading and notating music; 6. Listening to, analyzing, and describing music; 7. Evaluating music and music performances; 8. Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts, and; 9. Understanding music in relation to history and culture. (National Association for Music Education, n.d.)
With these standards as a guide, teachers create comprehensive programs in which students experience and think about music from numerous perspectives.
More recently, Wiggins and McTighe (2005) suggest that teachers develop units for learning around essential questions—that is, the big ideas or key concepts that students should be able to reflect on and respond to by the end of a unit. According to Wiggins and McTighe, by applying essential questions to unit design, teachers help students see the priorities within their learning and connect these ideas as their understanding evolves through continued experiences. According to Wiggins and McTighe, Essential questions are the how and why questions that help students think about their understanding of music in personal meaningful ways. This idea is applied in the sample unit presented here which begins with a student-centered discussion about the various ways in which students experience repetitions and contrasts in their daily lives; subsequently, this discussion shifts to a conversation of the various ways in which composers use repetitions and contrasts in music.
In this article, an approach for using essential questions to guide long-term planning in general music is presented through the unit Repetitions and Contrasts: As musicians, how do we use form to organize and understand music? Several aspects of unit development are described, including (a) Essential Questions, (b) Learning Guideposts, (c) Lessons, and (d) Student Assessment. Students acquire content knowledge about music and, through this knowledge, gain an understanding of how form helps us interpret the world around us as learners and as musicians.
Essential Questions 1
Using the concept of repetitions and contrasts as a basis, unit development began by identifying a broad foundation for learning in school and in school music:
Using the forms of repetition and contrast to interpret what we learn in school. (foundation for school)
Using the forms of repetition and contrast to interpret what we learn in school music. (foundation for school music)
These ideas were transformed into essential questions to guide the unit Repetition and Contrasts:
Repetitions and Contrasts: How do we use form to help us organize and understand the world around us?
Repetitions and Contrasts: As musicians, how do we use form to organize and understand music?
These open-ended questions are the linchpins in this unit. Students are encouraged to become questioners and problem solvers as they gain insights that lead to greater understanding of music; they are encouraged to reflect on what they learn about form in music and relate this to what they observe about form in the world around them. For example, in the fourth lesson, students problem solve around the piece Linus and Lucy (Guaraldi, 1988), identifying the sections of the pieces and then devising movements to accompany the changing characteristics of these varying sections. After completing this activity, they reflect on where they see repetitions and contrasts in school.
Learning Guideposts
Learning guideposts provide direction and impetus for the essential questions on which the unit is founded. Learning guideposts detailed for this unit include content and materials, processes, culminating project/performance, and propensities (see Table 1).
Learning Guideposts.
Content and Materials
Content refers to the elements of music with which students gain understanding as they engage in the planned unit activities. In general music, content is commonly arranged around elements of music such as melody, duration (including beat, rhythm, and meter), harmony, and form. Expressive qualities such as timbre, tempo, and dynamics are also viewed as content areas for study. In this unit, the acquisition of new knowledge is approached through students’ active engagement with music within an aural context. Specific knowledge associated with this aural experience is often taught through direct teaching. For example, students augment performance of the song Land of the Silver Birch with a 16-beat movement composition after which the teacher provides the label, ternary, for ABA form (Lesson 2); students organize rhythmic phrases into an ABACADA pattern after which the teacher provides the label rondo to this form (Lesson 3).The materials are the resources (e.g., songs, games, recordings) and equipment (e.g., pitched and nonpitched instruments) through which students gain knowledge about music.
Processes
The content of music provides a knowledge base from which students engage in the processes of music as active thinkers and doers. In Erickson’s (2002) words, “a process can be thought of as a ‘complex performance’” (p. 95). In general music, students gain proficiency in a variety of skill areas including singing, playing instruments, moving, and listening. The acquisition of proficiency in these skill areas requires thoughtful practice in which students apply understanding toward musical ends. This takes a variety of forms in this unit as they express their musicality by singing songs such as Land of the Silver Birch (Learning Episode 1) or To Stop the Train (Lesson 3), moving to represent the contrasting and repeating sections of the piece Linus and Lucy (Learning Episode 4), and creating and performing their own compositions (Learning Episodes 8 through 11).
Culminating Project/Performance
The culminating project or performance is an opportunity for students to apply the content knowledge and skills acquired as a result of their experiences. In this unit, students work in small groups to create original compositions using a form of their choice. They perform the composition for their peers and reflect on their experiences as composers and their impressions of the final product. Through reflection, they relate what they know about the use of repetition and contrasts to create form in music and the use of repetition and contrasts to organize content in other subject areas. For example, in music we use repetition and contrast to organize the sections of a piece; in science we use repetition and contrast to explain the passing of the seasons.
Depending on the particular context, culminating performances may be designed by the teacher, by the students, or in teacher-student collaborations. Regardless of who develops the specifications for this task, the guidelines remain open so that students have numerous avenues by which to create their responses. This freedom for musical exploration is critical as it is by actively engaging in a learning environment that students increase their understanding of musical creation and performance. For this reason, it remains essential that the culminating task interests the students and motivates them to see the work through to a satisfactory conclusion.
Projects allow students choice and control over how they structure their composition and the process they employ in bringing their project to fruition. Student decisions include:
How will they approach this task from a problem solving perspective?
What steps to follow in developing their composition?
What instrumentation to employ for the composition and for its performance?
How will responsibility for the tasks be allocated among the group?
The amount of freedom given to students depends on their current levels of understanding. This is a balance between providing sufficient guidelines so that students are not overwhelmed by the task while, simultaneously providing students with freedom to make decisions and maintain ownership of their work.
Propensities
Propensities are the long-term outcomes of the learning context: In this case, students apply their knowledge as they perform and create music and apply their musical understanding when listening to music.
The Lessons
Individual lessons are framed in various combinations of sections denoted as motivation, development, extension, and coda. Design of particular lessons is reactive to the learning context. Because of this, not all experiences follow the same four-section framework. Each experience is approximately 40 minutes in length but may be realigned to fit varying class lengths in individual programs. This unit is designed for students in grade four. Adjustments may be made to specific curricular details (such as content or materials) to suit the varying contexts of general music teachers and their students.
Motivation
motivation situates the lesson within the broad foundations and essential questions for the unit: How do we use form to help us organize and understand the world around us? As musicians, how do we use form to organize and understand music? This is illustrated in Table 2 where the first lesson begins with a discussion of students’ experiences with repetitions and contrasts in their lives and in music. The motivation sets the stage as students have opportunities to see how learning in music relates to the world outside the music classroom. As students progress through this unit, they revisit the foundation and essential questions, gaining an understanding of how new information contributes to their overall perspectives. As well, the essential questions may be revised in response to insightful conversations—illustrating how the unit framework is responsive to the students’ growth of understanding of music.
Lesson Summaries.
Development and Extension
Examples of lessons structured around development and extension are summarized in Table 2. In the development and extension portions of the lessons, students are involved in activities tied to the skills and processes identified in the learning guideposts of the design framework. The teacher uses direct instruction to identify terms and/or labels in music. This is followed by activities in which students apply their new understanding in musical contexts. For example, in Lesson 3, the teacher leads students to identify rondo form. In the next session, students have direct experience with rondo form by creating movements that reflect the form of the piece Linus and Lucy (Guaraldi, 1988).
The development section sets the stage for further learning as students apply their musical knowledge. For example, in Lesson 1, students begin to develop an Orff orchestration for the song Land of the Silver Birch by devising a bordun accompaniment. In Lesson 2, this orchestration is developed further by adding nonpitched percussion. The extension provides avenues for students to refine the ideas and/or content introduced in the development. For the most part, the extension focuses students’ experiences on the essential questions that form the basis for the unit. For example, the Orff orchestration developed in Experiences 1 and 2 extends to movement compositions in ABA form. This activity is extended when the class develops a group composition in rondo form (Lesson 3).
This is not a linear model with students moving smoothly from the motivation, to the development, and on to the extension phase in each lesson. Rather, the structure of each experience is responsive to the content, skills, and activities planned for the learning encounter.
Coda
Within the discipline of music, “coda is the term applied to any passage, long or short, added at the end of a composition or a section of a composition in order to give a greater sense of finality” (Scholes, 1989, p. 200). Transferring this definition to the lessons, the coda provides students opportunities to consider the essential questions, and review them in terms of the activities in which they engaged. For example, students begin lesson 4 by discussing personal reactions/reflections to the piece Linus and Lucy, spending the majority of class time analyzing the form. During the coda, they revisit the essential question as related to school as a whole by completing the statement: “I see repetition and contrasts in school when …”. From this perspective, the coda provides links between the students’ doing and their understanding, thus providing an avenue for students to think about and interpret their experiences in school.
Assessment 2
In this unit, assessment is embedded with learning from multiple perspectives denoted as assessment for learning, assessment as learning, and assessment of learning.
Assessment for Learning
The unit framework presented here is a guide for shaping students’ interactions with the teacher, with peers, and with the subject matter. Students are involved with music in a variety of ways, including (a) teacher-directed instruction to identify new musical knowledge of musical terms such as rondo form, (b) whole class collaboration to create a composition in rondo form, and (c) small group work in which students create compositions that reflect the form of their choice. Assessment for learning is embedded within these interactions as feedback that helps students clarify their understanding of new information and monitors their development of musical proficiencies (Earl, 2003). In these lessons assessment for learning is predominantly oral feedback. Group singing is an ideal example of assessment for learning. A teacher’s direct feedback is assessment for learning when comments such as “breathe at the end of phrases” provides students with information about their performance. Using a less direct approach a teacher might pose a question such as “What did you hear in the first phrase?” This encourages students to provide information relevant to assessment for learning when teacher and students use this feedback to improve future performance. Peers help peers in a similar process. For example, when students work in small groups, their interactions are assessment for learning as they help each other work through the problem at hand. For example, three students are writing a piece in ABAA form for the culminating project. They experiment with various combinations of pitched and nonpitched instruments, discussing the positives and negatives of these performances (assessment for learning) before deciding on the final instrumentations.
Assessment for learning also provides teachers with information by which to modify lessons to meet the students’ needs. This is a reminder that the unit framework and lesson summaries are guides that create avenues for learning and are responsive to the needs of individual learning contexts. Assessment for learning provides the information by which revisions are made to this plan.
Assessment as Learning
Assessment as learning is an active process in which students monitor their progress, using this information to gain personal insights into their learning. Assessment as learning is self-assessment. Assessment as learning relates to the broad foundations for school and for music experiences within school. Through successive experiences, students increasingly become more adept at assessing their own progress. In this form, assessment as learning is difficult for a teacher to monitor as it is an internal process that occurs while the students are involved with music and making music.
As portrayed here, the coda provides opportunities for students to self-reflect. Students actively create their own understanding by reflecting on what they have accomplished and use feedback to adapt or adjust their thinking (Earl, 2003). For example, Kale reflects on his group’s composition, commenting that the bells create a louder accompaniment than the triangle when adding sounds in Section B. The reflection becomes a reminder to continue this experimentation next class. Through written reflections, teachers may gain some insights into a student’s use of assessment as learning. Note also that assessment as learning may double as assessment for learning if the teacher or a peer provides Kale with feedback information in relation to the musical problem he poses in his journal.
Assessment of Learning
Assessment of learning is summative assessment. The information obtained in assessment of learning indicates each student’s levels of achievement in terms of the outcomes for learning at the end of a unit of study. For this unit, the culminating project and accompanying performance incorporate aspects of form (students write a composition around the formal structure of their choice) as well as other knowledge (such as the diatonic scale and tonic-dominant harmony). This task also assesses performance skills appropriate to the specifications of the work that emerges from specific groups (e.g., singing, playing pitched and nonpitched percussion). The essential questions and learning guideposts in this curriculum framework are a foundation for this culminating project, thereby providing a link between the outcomes of instruction and the summative assessment.
The way in which this information is gathered and reported varies depending on the administrative requirements of particular school districts (and schools) in which music teachers work. If teachers are not required to provide a summative grade (e.g., percentages or letter grades) a narrative report may represent assessment of learning. When teachers are required to submit a grade, they may use checklists or rubrics to represent selected items referenced to the final assessment task. For example, teachers and students may prepare assessment profiles for the culminating project using a checklist to respond to questions such as the following: Does the composition reflect the appropriate form? Is the composition musically accurate (i.e., number of beats in a measure)? Do the musicians play what is notated?
Summary
In this article, an approach to unit planning using essential questions (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) is described within the context of general music education and illustrated in the unit Repetition and Contrasts: Understanding Music Through Form. This unit is founded on the essential question: As musicians, how do we use form to organize and understand music? Learning guideposts provide direction and impetus for the essential questions on which the unit is based. Learning guideposts detailed for this unit include content and materials, processes, culminating project/performance, and propensities. Summaries of lessons illustrate how the ideas presented in this framework transfer to daily instruction. Student assessment is embedded within lessons from multiple perspectives denoted as assessment for learning, assessment as learning, and assessment of learning.
The essential questions, and the accompanying learning guideposts, provide a framework from which current practice is envisioned around broad perspectives for understanding. This plan is responsive to the needs of the students. As they progress through the unit, the foundations and essential questions are revisited and revised in light of new insights; other aspects of the learning guideposts are modified as appropriate. Lesson design is fluid, providing for interactions between teacher and students to guide how learning emerges within particular contexts.
This design for unit planning is not a recipe to be followed in a step-by-step fashion. Rather, this framework provides ideas for teachers searching for ways to reframe unit planning within a broad focus for general music and for transferring what students learn and do in music to what they learn and do in other subject areas. Essential questions provide an additional layer of focus to what many music teachers already do in their classrooms. When teachers reframe units within the structure of essential questions, much of the established materials and methods for instruction remain in place. Essential questions provide directions and foundations for students to understand the ‘big ideas’ about music. As well, essential questions provide overt guidance to seeing relationships between what we do in music class and what we do in school and in our lives outside of school. Essential questions help students to see the priorities within what they learn and to connect these ideas to their evolving understanding. General music teachers interested in finding new ways to present curricular ideas or wishing to reframe existing curricula may wish to apply the ideas presented in this example to their teaching contexts.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.