Reporting OKM Music: Cultivating Growth in Redesigned Curriculum
To share learning beyond the limited data on Report Cards, students are invited to present their learning to parents both at our concerts, and at home:
As we guide students to understand and achieve learning standards, they can learn more deeply, because they are guided to focus on the most meaningful big ideas - the "what, how, and why's" of their learning. Thus, communicating student learning becomes a partnership between the students and the teachers.
Quick Summary: Students' Report Card letter grades are determined as follows:
The Details
Music is both an ethereal art, and a highly technical and complex endeavour. For parents to understand how a band of 100 students is able to perform music and apply all the elements of technique (including phrasing, breathing, blend, balance, intonation, articulation, dynamics, and decoding notation), parents would need to be highly proficient at music.
Reporting and writing about student's musical achievement in a letter grade/comment format is like dancing about architecture: the medium struggles to achieve the goals. Given that anything that could impede learning should be avoided, when it comes to reporting, we should avoid comparing a classroom of students to each other, or too much of a "widely held expectation", because fairness and feeling valued is very important to students.
It's not possible to have a fair baseline with single standards, for Letter Grades that assess "Performance to Grade Level Expectations": because of the nature of the 30 or so students who makeup any given band class. Some Senior students will have had 10 years of highly effective private lessons with Royal Conservatory of Music, they don't have braces, and they are playing on professional quality instruments. In the same class, many students have never had a lesson, just got braces, and they might be playing a tougher instrument.
If we judged the "quality of sound", would that first manner of student all get "A"s, and the second all fail? Of course not! Instead, teachers customize the learning and assessment - for each student, according to their circumstances.
Fortunately, what matters the most is that students are deeply engaged in their learning, highly valued in their contributions, and through music - that they are developing wonderful transferable life skills, like persistent commitment, resiliency, appreciation of art and beauty, fun, recreation, and balance, all of which are embedded in the BC Curriculum's "Core Competencies"
How then, can parents decipher how well their sons/daughters are doing with OKM music?
At OKM Band, under the Redesigned Curriculum, students are guided to become expert "self-coaches", where they intrinsically understand all the elements of music, and apply them within their ensemble performance. Through our guided Self Assessment Rubrics, students understand more deeply what success looks like, and how failures are embraced as learning opportunities.
Here is how Reporting/Communicating Student Learning is embedded within our music program:
Parents: Supporting and Understanding student learning: The best way to understand and support your son/daughter's learning of music - is to hear their music in our ensembles at our concerts. To support the journey, or to better understand their individual development along the way, we encourage your son/daughter to also perform for you at home on a regular basis, using the online tracks that we provide for each class.
As we guide students to understand and achieve learning standards, they can learn more deeply, because they are guided to focus on the most meaningful big ideas - the "what, how, and why's" of their learning. Thus, communicating student learning becomes a partnership between the students and the teachers.
Quick Summary: Students' Report Card letter grades are determined as follows:
- Junior Bands: students have a Self Assessment Rubric on their stands, and teachers project on the whiteboard. The focus of the semester's learning is embedded in the rubric.
- Throughout the lesson, teachers refer to the assessment criteria on the rubric, and guide students to understand, apply, and record each standard of achievement onto the rubric. Students, often in teams, reflect on their playing, as teachers prompt them to think within the mindset of a musician. We can definitely hear the success in the music!
- Teachers float around the room, during group ensemble performances, and listen to each student playing. We retrieve the students' Rubrics, and make sure they have accurately assessed their performance with Letter Grade and Work Ethic.
- What you see on the Report Card: We have designed a hybrid of two elements of reporting, so parents can best understand their son/daughter's achievement:
- First, all students are guided to be able to effectively communicate and demonstrate their learning to the parents at home in highly detailed manner, by playing their instrument for parents to our online tracks, while referring to the Self Assessment Rubric. Regardless of the parent's personal proficiency of music, they should get a strong sense of how well their son/daughter is performing as they set up, go online, and play along with the posted tracks. Also, when parents attend our public concerts, they can see/hear how the individual part played by the student works within the ensemble.
- Because teachers will have listened to the individual student's playing, and reviewed the rubric with them, the students should already know what their letter grade/work ethic is, and why, before the report card is issued. For Junior bands, teachers float around the room, during ensemble performances, and listen to each student playing, while retrieve and reviewing the students' Rubrics. Teachers make sure students have accurately assessed their performance. For now, that includes a Letter Grade and Work Ethic mark. Thus, students should already know what their mark is, and why.
The Details
Music is both an ethereal art, and a highly technical and complex endeavour. For parents to understand how a band of 100 students is able to perform music and apply all the elements of technique (including phrasing, breathing, blend, balance, intonation, articulation, dynamics, and decoding notation), parents would need to be highly proficient at music.
Reporting and writing about student's musical achievement in a letter grade/comment format is like dancing about architecture: the medium struggles to achieve the goals. Given that anything that could impede learning should be avoided, when it comes to reporting, we should avoid comparing a classroom of students to each other, or too much of a "widely held expectation", because fairness and feeling valued is very important to students.
It's not possible to have a fair baseline with single standards, for Letter Grades that assess "Performance to Grade Level Expectations": because of the nature of the 30 or so students who makeup any given band class. Some Senior students will have had 10 years of highly effective private lessons with Royal Conservatory of Music, they don't have braces, and they are playing on professional quality instruments. In the same class, many students have never had a lesson, just got braces, and they might be playing a tougher instrument.
If we judged the "quality of sound", would that first manner of student all get "A"s, and the second all fail? Of course not! Instead, teachers customize the learning and assessment - for each student, according to their circumstances.
Fortunately, what matters the most is that students are deeply engaged in their learning, highly valued in their contributions, and through music - that they are developing wonderful transferable life skills, like persistent commitment, resiliency, appreciation of art and beauty, fun, recreation, and balance, all of which are embedded in the BC Curriculum's "Core Competencies"
How then, can parents decipher how well their sons/daughters are doing with OKM music?
At OKM Band, under the Redesigned Curriculum, students are guided to become expert "self-coaches", where they intrinsically understand all the elements of music, and apply them within their ensemble performance. Through our guided Self Assessment Rubrics, students understand more deeply what success looks like, and how failures are embraced as learning opportunities.
Here is how Reporting/Communicating Student Learning is embedded within our music program:
- Daily classes/rehearsals are posted online for all classes: this paces and supports learning. Instructors are like "personal trainers" giving "intensives", guiding students to correct technique, musicality, and performance. Students appreciate having constant and instant feedback at all times, in every class. It's Formative - "Assessment For Learning".
- Home practice: Students can play along to our online resources/recordings. Every week, the Method Book exercises are posted. Parents are encouraged to listen, support, and hear progress, and have their son/daughter explain what they have determined is a focus area, as per the Self Assessment Rubric .
- Concerts: Our "Presentation of Learning" is always through gigs...as engaging group projects. Parents and the community can hear the learning. After the concert, students can perform all the songs at home, using the online rehearsal tracks. This is the best way parents can understand the highly technical deconstruction of hundreds of parts, whittled down to hearing an individual's performance.
- Online Self-Assessments (like Self Assessment Rubric)
- The Self Assessment Rubric is projected on the whiteboard, AND each student has a hard-copy beside their music.
- During the rehearsal, teachers refer to the rubric, while students self-assess how they are doing for each criteria. Teachers are learning with students, and guiding students towards thinking critically and creatively about how and what they're learning...to understand the criteria, and apply the strategies, for personal growth and success. For example: if the group forgets to give blend and balance during a decrescendo and rubato to a fermata, the teacher guides the students to know what that means, and how to do that - students explore and team to talk about, and prove: how the printed music, and sounds in the room, should guide each musician's decisions and "inside thinking".
- This allows us to embed deep learning into reporting, and move away from Individual Playing Tests (Student & Instructor rubrics). In practical terms, testing 40 students individually in a room would hurt learning. Now, during ensemble playing, we retrieve the Student Self assessments, one at a time, and talk with the students about how they are doing. See Course Outlines for details. For junior bands, we have about per year (senior bands optional).
- Report cards. The letter grades and/or percentages try to encapsulate learning. We individualize and personalize the expectations for each student: to welcome, nurture, develop and value the contributions of all musicians.
- Standards for each Instrument: Every rehearsal, students can reflect on their performance, based on what Directors are explaining, and what they are hearing around them. This gives each student an ongoing understanding of "how they are doing"...
Parents: Supporting and Understanding student learning: The best way to understand and support your son/daughter's learning of music - is to hear their music in our ensembles at our concerts. To support the journey, or to better understand their individual development along the way, we encourage your son/daughter to also perform for you at home on a regular basis, using the online tracks that we provide for each class.
Changing Reporting: Communication of Student Learning within BC's redesigned curriculum
The OKM Music Program has always strived to engage students towards deeper understandings about the roles played by the individual musician. The big ideas: how does the individual's music and learning fit within the community and ensemble's message and purpose? Through guided inquiry, we learn together as musicians - to think critically and creatively, to communicate meaningful ideas through music, and to consider what our learning means within our personal and social lives. This is a powerful metaphor for learning for today's world,
To underscore that OKM Music students learn as a community, in partnership with their ensemble/team, and together with the Music Directors, parents, and audiences, we are supporting the Self-Assessment and reporting of the Core Competencies, as follows:
Clear Learning Intentions: (Daily Classes)
Meaningful Learning Experiences: (Classes and Concerts)
Student Ownership of Learning: (Student Self-Assessments)
Authentic Evidence of Learning: (Perform and Home & at Concerts)
Thoughtful, Descriptive Feedback of Learning: (Formative: Assessment For Learning)
To underscore that OKM Music students learn as a community, in partnership with their ensemble/team, and together with the Music Directors, parents, and audiences, we are supporting the Self-Assessment and reporting of the Core Competencies, as follows:
Clear Learning Intentions: (Daily Classes)
- We clearly describe what music students are expected to understand, know, and do.
- We post learning standards and content daily for all Classes
- We guide students in scaffolded learning through thousands of lessons between Grade 7-12.
Meaningful Learning Experiences: (Classes and Concerts)
- We develop deeper understandings of music happens as we prepare and present at concerts
- Concerts powerfully display learning within these competencies
Student Ownership of Learning: (Student Self-Assessments)
- When a student plays their instrument in a class ensemble, they are constantly self-assessing by hearing the music, and correcting wrong notes, adjusting their tempo, and responding to the conducting. The teachers/directors and students can all hear the learning. Music is constant self-assessment and feedback.
- Student complete online self assessment (like this sample) to encourages self-reflection and understandings of "what, how, and why" they are learning.
- Learners can select their own evidence to best represents their growth over time.
Authentic Evidence of Learning: (Perform and Home & at Concerts)
- Hearing music at concerts: clearly represents what learners understand, what they know.
- Following up at home: Having students play their parts with online "karaoke" rehearsal tracks, posted in classes.
Thoughtful, Descriptive Feedback of Learning: (Formative: Assessment For Learning)
- In every class, students receive instant feedback from their teacher, which is the Formative, "Assessment for Learning". A music class is a natural and unique environment, where instant feedback is the norm.
- For example, while we are learning the complex technical requirements of performing with "dynamics", teachers and students work together to tweak the relative volume of the individual as it sounds within both their section, and across the ensemble - to give the best blend and balance, and to move the musical idea forward - where the melody is the most present in the mix, and all other lines are intensifying the changes, balanced in the "Pyramid of Sound", and conveying the overall intent of the music. As students perform to this standard, the teachers instantly "coach" and direct their playing technique, musicality, and overall role. Students also instantly "self-assess", as they adjust to best perform within the ensemble -all in real time.