INTASC 4 - Multiple Instructional Strategies
The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage students' development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills.
The way students interpret and receive information is as diverse as the students in your classroom are. Therefore, teachers need to provide just as many varied opportunities for students to produce their work as there are approaches to instructing it. Education is meant to engage the mind. Music especially is not just a subject of learning facts and equations, but it is one of creation and production. A great music educator will reflect on their instruction and lesson plans so that they encourage students to think independently, solve creatively, and have the motivation necessary to become great musicians.
When presenting new musical information, it is very beneficial to use the whole-part-whole process. The cycle of modeling, repetition, and review is always a general instructional method that can apply to most all lessons, and it keeps the focus on what the student is gaining from the presentation. The direct instruction cycle is another highly effective strategy to always keep in mind. It consists of teacher presentation, student response, and teacher feedback/reinforcement. What is important is that teachers choose instructional strategies that are student-centered and allow for repetition and feedback.
In general music classrooms, teachers must always be leading students to knowledge of music concepts through skills and experiences. These skills and experiences include singing, playing, moving, listening, creating, reading, and notating. Our instructional strategies must facilitate this goal, and different strategies will be employed depending on the skill and concepts of concentration. With all of them, however, modeling, repetition, and the whole-part-whole or chunking process is essential.
Through my field teaching experiences I have learned to plan and adapt on the spot to include various instructional strategies. I plan literacy exercises that include audiation, reading, singing and high level problem solving. I plan technique exercises for the individual and the choir that address performance skills, self assessment, and musical concepts. The bulk of rehearsals are planned around literature that can address the group's performance abilities, comprehensive musicianship, and synthesis of musical skills (literacy, technique, etc.). Also, teachers often have to adapt on the spot to provide students with a varied strategy other than what was planned in order to better enforce the skill or concept at hand.
Developing a unit curriculum plan with a long-term time frame and cross curricular connections greatly increased my ability to use a bigger variety of instructional strategies. I saw a day to day plan of the same piece of literature fleshed out and found ways to offer a variety of activities to teach this piece and its related content. I am also a big proponent of cross-curricular connection. Through cross-curricular connections in reading, writing, history, and more students will really improve critical thinking skills that can hopefully increase their comprehensive understanding of music.
Artifact 1 (Lesson Plan - multiple instructional strategies)
This lesson was part of a unit curriculum project, and in this lesson plan there is a variety of instructional strategies used. I choral part teach through a read and correct approach, I incorporate music literacy techniques into the repertoire learning, I offer a cross-curricular connection to an assigned related reading with a writing assignment, and I ask questions that encourage convergent and divergent thinking.
Unit Lesson Plan Example | |
File Size: | 66 kb |
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Artifact 2 (Literature Spec. sheet)
This is an example of a specifications sheet I would keep for each piece of music in my choral library. The information gathered through this type of analysis will guide my planning of the related concepts and skills and fit the piece within a larger comprehensive unit. This type of tool keeps the students at the center of my literature selections because I can see the vocal range required of them and potential problems they may have.