Posted on 03/18/2012 at 08:09 PM by Global Reach
Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance Model
Key Points: Outcomes, Music Selection, Analysis, Strategies, and Assessment
Planning Instruction
Using the Points of the CMP Model Instructional planning based on the curriculum document is the work of the individual teacher, and CMP is especially effective at this level. There are basically five parts of the CMP model through which teachers plan, prepare and present materials, and assess student work: Outcomes, Music Selection, Analysis, Strategies, and Assessment. The following is a brief explanation of how using the CMP model enhances the process of planning and teaching the standards.
The individual teacher determines the Outcomes of the last two levels of the curriculum mentioned at the beginning: the instructional projects and the daily rehearsals. The outcomes of instructional projects typically focus on several standards selected by the teacher as appropriate for the students’ abilities and understandings; are quite specific; and have a definite time frame. Ideally, the students will be involved in determining these learning targets. Finally, even more immediate in focus and specificity are the outcomes of each rehearsal, which must have clear connections with the project and the standards.
Having determined the project’s outcomes, the teacher proceeds to another point of the model to choose the curricular content – the music – to achieve those outcomes. In a standards-based CMP setting, Music Selection is aligned with those outcomes or targets selected as appropriate for the project and for the students’ abilities. Guiding questions in selecting music might be: Does the composition have good teaching opportunities for the standards and other outcomes selected for this project? What does it teach? Is it appropriate for these students? Does it have musical value? Other points to consider are its historical/cultural context and connections to the other arts and other disciplines.
The next logical step in planning is Analysis of the music. Analysis in the CMP model goes beyond the typical score analysis to include points such as the compositional devices used, how the elements of music are utilized, what makes it a quality piece, what the heart of the piece is, etc. Students can and should participate in the analysis. All these considerations lead naturally into the next point of the model – teaching strategies.
Strategies refer to the ways in which teachers can facilitate learning. Since motivation is a vital element in learning, it is important for teachers to devise instructional techniques that both enhance student motivation and coincide with how students learn best. The extended section that follows is a description of motivational factors and of teaching strategies that utilize them.
The nature of the learning tasks can be a significant source of motivation. Students respond quite differently to tasks that are authentic “real-life” tasks – those that adults confront and that have importance beyond the classroom (e.g., performances for other classes, concerts, etc.) – than to tasks obviously constructed for grading. Further, motivational research has shown that students respond positively to tasks that are challenging but within their abilities and that have relevance to them. Also, creative tasks which provide the student a degree of freedom in their resolution (e.g., performances, compositions, improvisations, etc.) can be a source of personal pride and intrinsic motivation. To maximize motivation, then, teachers should develop tasks that are authentic, challenging, creative, and relevant. Instructional/assessment strategies that make use of the three following inborn factors universally present in all humans also foster student motivation.
These are survival instincts, born of eons of evolution in a hostile world in which those who matured quickly and had acquired the will and wit to learn about and control their environment or accommodate to it held a survival advantage.
The following are instructional strategies (adapted from the PROPEL** model) that make use of these motivational pathways of learning.
The final point of the model, Assessment, ideally should be used 1) primarily as a means of support for the students’ efforts to enhance their learning; and 2) as information to enable teachers to facilitate students’ effort more efficiently. When self- and teacher-assessment are used in an ongoing way to improve competence (embedded assessment) instead of an end-of-unit occasion to prove competence, the patterns of both the teacher’s and students’ behavior, cognition, and affect are profoundly different. In such a supportive climate, students tend to take risks beyond the safe response and develop and use higher-order and transferable thinking skills. They are also generally more positive, prefer challenge, focus on improving their competence, and tend to invest the necessary time and effort to accomplish mastery. And when students help determine the criteria of the projects and the proficiency levels, as suggested above, self-assessment abilities (Standards F & G) can develop naturally, with (and this is very important) teachers giving supportive<em> feedback on the students’ self-critiques. This will make unnecessary a fourth question often associated with trips - “Are we there yet?” Good assessment, therefore, will look like good instruction, and, indeed, should be an episode of instruction/learning. Thus embedded in instruction, such assessments will forward the goal of CMP – “Performance with Understanding” – and make unnecessary and irrelevant the “gotcha” form of assessment so beloved of those who are convinced that more tests and harder punishments for failure are all that are needed to improve education.
*CMP, Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance, is a model developed in Wisconsin in 1977 for teaching musical understandings in the performance class. For details contact WMEA, 1005 Quinn Drive, Waunakee, WI 53597, or WMEA. **Arts PROPEL is an instructional/assessment model developed by Harvard Project Zero that stresses students’ active engagement in their own learning. For details contact Project Zero. ***SCASS-Arts was a consortium of several states that developed performance and selected assessment tasks in the four arts areas. For information contact Council of Chief State School Officers, One Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20001-1431 or SCASS. Adapted from the September 2000 issue of the Wisconsin School Musician and used with permission.
Last updated on 3/7/2011 1:38:20 PM |