Developing Critical Thinking and Assessment in Music Classrooms

Interest Surveys and Questionnaires

Using surveys and questionnaires in the classroom are an excellent way to gather information about student interests, background, needs, and struggles. This information is important for primary assessments, especially when working with new students. I suggest interviewing the students at the beginning of each school year to get to know them better. When asking for personal information or opinion, it is always more effective if the questions are provided in written form. This way, the students have more time to think about the answer in a less threatening environment that one-on-one questioning might provide. It also provides reference information for future use if needed. Interest surveys or questionnaires provide invaluable information for the teacher about what motivates students, and how the curriculum could be geared toward students' needs. This is especially important for elective teachers, where the students “choose” to be in the class. Music teachers must always know what their students are interested in and use this information when planning for instruction in order to develop and retain a successful program. As Gerald Graf suggests in his book, Clueless In Academe, … “we need to tap into students' hidden intellect (Graf, pp 222) by discovering their subculture and addressing it through our instruction. Then, we need to find the way to teach students the connection between their daily life and their academic thought. Questioning students is a first step to tapping into the students' natural resources, or intellect.”

When you question your students, it provides the necessary information to be sensitive to diverse backgrounds, interests, and needs. This is why it is so important: it shows students that their background is important to the teacher and the classroom. It also empowers the students to have a choice in their learning process.

Exit Tickets

Another effective tool for teachers, the use of exit tickets, is a strategy where the teacher creates a question(s) that the students need to answer at the very end of class. Students are told that answering the exit ticket question is their “ticket out the door.” The questions usually help students to think and then summarize what they learned during class. Questions should also encourage critical thinking or opinion about the lesson. This strategy promotes higher order thinking for the student by summarizing their thoughts on paper. This is a great strategy because it doesn't use a lot of classroom instruction time. However, within this short timeframe, the teacher obtains critical feedback about the effectiveness of the lesson and students' thinking. Exit tickets are an excellent assessment strategy. They also provide the students with the opportunity to gather their own thoughts and actively think at the end of the lesson.

The purpose of the exit ticket strategy is for students construct their own knowledge and thought process, instead of the teacher simply providing the information. “Questions open the mind; statements close it.” (Sprunger, pp 86). It is important to students that they are actively involved in getting the information. It is also important for the teachers to guide critical thinking with the right questions.

Asking a question instead of giving the answer is also an important concept of the Suzuki philosophy in music education. Suzuki developed a system of teaching a musical instrument imitating the natural way children acquire their native language. One of the major ideas of Suzuki was to ask instead of telling the students what to improve. Trough guiding each violin lesson with questions, Suzuki was able to bring very young students to an exceptional level of playing their instrument. These ideas could be very well applied to a regular classroom with great success.

Response Writing

Music classes provide excellent opportunities for using response writing after music festivals, concerts, school-related performances, etc. Writing immediately after an educational event requires students to engage in interpretive and evaluative thinking. This is easily done by asking students to do a quick writing activity. Ask them to take one-to-10 minutes to summarize their thoughts about their concert experience and what they learned. With this type of assignment, students should be given the freedom to express themselves in a free form of writing. When doing a quick writing activity, the emphasis is on content and expression, and not so much on grammar and text structure.

A teacher may also choose to create a more structured writing response activity. In this case, the students need specific directions such as length, questions to be answered, and text structure. You may also want to provide samples of what is expected. Response writing can be used as an assessment tool because it reflects a student's view of the event and provides documentation. The writing also shows the thought process, which can be analyzed and compared.

In my classroom, I collect all written responses during the school year. I have found that using writing assignments after music events to be invaluable when presenting the effectiveness of my classroom to administration. When administrators attend a concert, they may not understand the process in teaching music with relationship to the final product. By providing writing samples from students, the thought process after the concert provides documentation of student self-assessment. This is more proof of students' work in your class, and it is what administrators are familiar with and relate to better.

Guest Artists

Music educators often invite other professionals as guests to their music classroom. Having a clinician or a guest presenter can be a great opportunity for students to develop their critical thinking skills. It is also a great way to incorporate some writing into the curriculum. Very often, students have lots of questions for the guest but they may not feel comfortable asking them in front of the class. A simple sheet for them to write their questions could be helpful for both the students and the guest. Students could also be given writing assignments/questionnaires to write what they have learned, what questions are still unanswered, and what was their general impression of the presentation. I have used such assignments effectively when inviting a clinician to work with a specific section of the orchestra. These assignments have taken care of discipline issues because they engage the whole class in the learning process. For example, I have been separating the upper and lower strings in order to work on sections of the music. While working with the lower strings section, the violins were engaged in writing about the sectional. They were given specific questions that guided them to observe and provide feedback. They also had to trace the progress of the lower strings in that particular piece of music.

Practice Logs

Student practice logs provide an ongoing record of homework. The use of practice logs can aid the clarity of home practice expectations. Music instruction is more effective when students are given very specific instructions about what to focus on while working at home. Practice logs can be implemented in many different ways. Students can write and track their practice in their agenda, they can have a separate chart, or they can write in a journal. I like the idea of including a place for parent-teacher communication, as well as for additional comments from students.

Practice logs can be an effective teaching tool, but only when teachers are consistent with their implementation. Students also have to be given clear direction of how much, and what exactly should go into their practice log. It is one of the greatest tools for assessment. It provides direct documentation between effort at home and performance in class. Because it is done on a continuing basis, practice logs are effective for tracking development. In my classroom, I expect students to return a practice log that is signed by a parent. The time that is spent practicing at home, as well as their consistency in submitting it, becomes a part of their grade. I keep a chart and note when students have not submitted their practice logs. After forgetting them twice, the third one becomes a warning for a lower grade for that grading period. As any other assessment tool, I collect all practice logs. I often use them for parent-teacher conferences. It clearly shows the gaps that need to be worked on. It is also a good assessment tool to present to administration when tracking the development of a child, or the different steps taken to develop a piece of music.

In their book Content Area Reading, Robert and Jo Anne Vacca present research that has revealed several characteristics of instruction that make students more focused in their learning. They state two of these characteristics as cultural sensitivity and active teaching methods, or the ability to provide active learning to the students. I believe that these strategies promote active engagement in the learning process. Therefore, all of these strategies could be used as an asset to creating a more focused and effective classroom learning experience.

These are just a few ideas teachers can use to integrate critical thinking into their music classroom. It is my hope that the strategies introduced in this article will serve as encouragement for music educators to discover more ideas to promote active learning in the classroom.