I'm still excited about lap and chair drumming, a month later. I've got to tell you about two awesome success stories in my classroom.

MYP Year 1: Grade 6 xBlock
xBlock is a new course that some schools are doing. Like Creative New Undertakings or Genius Hours, this is a course in which students are allowed to pursue any line of inquiry approved by their mentor teacher. I currently have two grade 6s who want to have a rock band. One is learning bass guitar and the other drum kit. Unfortunately, my drummer was terrified of touching the drums. He was worried that the sticks would go through the skins. He was worried it would be too loud and would upset people. He was worried that he wouldn't be good enough. In general, he was just worried. 

We went into the hallway and turned on the Just Play Drums PPTX file. Together, the two of us went through few tutorials. Once he was comfortable, I headed off to help my other xBlock musicians. The boy worked through the file. First, lap drumming, and then chair drumming. Over the next few classes, he became more and more confident. When he was finally ready to move to the drum kit, his confidence was soaring. He hit the drums loudly and proudly. He was now ready to start working on his piece with his partner.

We made up an xBlock promo video featuring the boy as he explained his progress through the creative cycle. The xBlock coordinator was amazed. He kept saying, "The level of confidence! The use of vocabulary! He really knows his stuff and is talking with a lot of critical thinking!"

MYP Year 5: Grade 10 Music
With the normal turnover rate of International Schools, we often get kids in with very limited music skills. This year, I had a student arrive in grade 10 with zero background in music. She signed up for the course because she loves music... though she had no skills. She attempted finger-picking guitar, and that went okay. She tried ukulele and did pretty well. Then, I gave her the Just Play Drums video.

I was worried that it would seem too childish for her. After all, the block before I had a 10 year old working on it, and she's 17. However, she faithfully sat and lap drummed with fast concentration. Next came the chair drumming. Over the next few classes, I walked around the different groups and didn't focus on how she was doing. On day, I noticed she was teaching another new boy how to drum. She was teaching him pretty complicated rhythms, especially for a newbie, and he was struggling a bit. I followed her back into her group's practice room to see how they were doing --> she was wonderful! It sounded like she'd been playing the drums for two months or more. She had more complicated rhythms than you'd expect for someone only playing for two weeks, and her sense of beat was spot-on.

​So yes, still completely enamored with Musical Futures' Just Play series. 

Here's a little present for you --> another rhythm sheet for your lap or chair drummers. This one is a rumba groove.  Enjoy!

Now, I don't want to have a race to the bottom, but I should tell you that you can buy drumsticks on Taobao for only 1RMB. That's $0.14 USD. Hey big-spender, go out and buy a class set for the price of $4.33! 

I'm telling you this because I learned about chair drum-sets at Musical Futures International this past weekend at a workshop in Hong Kong. You know when you learn something so fundamentally obvious that you just want to do a head-plant? That was me when I first learned about chair drum-sets. I tried to find a student video to show you, on YouTube, but there's none to be found. 

Basically, the kids play drums on their chairs. Yup. That's it. 

This is a screen capture from their tutorial PowerPoint. Your right foot steps up and down (pretending to be the bass). Your left hand hits the seat of the chair (snare drum) while your right hand hits the back of the chair (high hat). 

Then, you are given non-traditional notation - measures with pictures of the drum pieces, showing which are played on which beats. The files you get with MFI include cool rock favourites with the drums simplified and yet varied for the different sections of the song. It's harder than your typical, basic rock beat; it's much easier than intermediate drumming. Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, it's just right! 

What if you don't have access to MFI files? Well, I made the salsa notation shown above. I simply Googled, "Salsa drums sheet music" and found an example from www.onlinedrummer.com.  Then I went to websites offering free clipart and quickly put together this picture. 
​
Here is an example from a workshop in Cyprus (you'll need a VPN, my China-based friends!) This is a teacher's workshop; however, when I was in Hong Kong, they had a grade 5 class learn this for the first time, and the kids picked it up really well. 

Why am I so impressed with chair drum-sets?
a) It's cheap and so you can get an entire class drumming immediately
b) It takes away the prestige of the drum set, in which only a few chosen kids get to play it. 
c) It gives the basic skills on drum set, so when the kids get into their creative cycle groups and start deciding on instruments, everybody in the group can already play
d) It's a great gateway to playing on a real set. It's a way of talking about proper hand positions, etc., before they get on a real kit

I should say, thought, that standing isn't very helpful. When we learned this in the workshop, the teachers all sat down. This was better because it was more comfortable, but also because it more closely mimicked a real drum set. (Drummers don't typically stand when they play a kit!)

I'm in the middle of the creative cycle right now, so it's too late to introduce this to my classes. However, next semester's grade 6s are definitely all going to try this. I'm excited and am getting ready NOW!

Yet another reason why I love Musical Futures International (MFI) - they get a whole class playing along. It's a perfect example of differentiation. 

Let me just start off by saying I fully believe in playing several instruments. As international school teachers, we expect our students to speak a minimum of two languages, but we know students who speak three or four quite well. Why not with instruments?

MFI has a 'Just Play' system in which students in a class rotate through instruments on the exact same song. Let's say you have a class of 24 students and your instruments are voice, chair drums (more on that in another post!), ukulele, keyboards (more on that in another post!), bass, and guitars. You are going to have four students on each section. The experienced guitarists will simply be given chords; beginners will have sponges placed in their lowest three strings and will play with simplified fingerings. The keyboardists (and note, these are kids who may not know how to play piano!) will be given crib sheets that show root position chords. On the screen, they'll see an animated lead sheet. As the students are learning the piece (discussing its structure, use of chords, improvising solos, etc.), the teacher keeps swapping groups.  "Everybody move to the group beside them and play those instruments!" This gives the kids a foundation on all the instruments found in the room, improves their listening skills because they always have to be focusing on the chord changes on their new instrument, and keeps them from getting complacent ("Sorry. I only play bass.")

Here's an explanation of how it works:

Why is this so helpful to the IB specifically? Well, at NIS, music is an elective. I have some, but not a lot, of choice in students. For example, if I get 10 drummers in one semester, the school takes pity on me and does some swaps. Otherwise, I get whomever I get.  When it comes to the creative cycle, it's sometimes hard to put together balanced groups because we don't want to end up with a pro group and then two groups with absolute beginners who can't play anything! Also, that's not really 'student voice and choice,' which is a strategy statement at my school.  Now imagine a class in which every single child has experience on voice, keyboard, ukulele, bass, drums and guitar. In this scenario, the kids have much more freedom in choosing their own groups and repertoire. Before, teachers might have said, "Well, that group has three guitarists, so I have to give you a pianist."  However, now there's much more flexibility. Now the question might simply be, "Will Bobby be on-task if he's working with Mike?" The question of feasibility in groupings has been solved. 

"Yes, Amy, but what if you get 5 drummers in one group?" Well, that's a comment for the next blog post. See you next week!

I used to be a purist. I used to hate TAB because I wanted students reading bass clef notation. Even kids who barely spoke English, had no music background, and were only going to be in my class for a trimester once in a three year period. Then I realised that was just not going to happen. That's when I started moving to meeting their needs. For example, If kids were 100% beginners on the bass, I'd just have them playing open strings and simple roots. If they had some experience, I moved them to TAB. Once they were intermediates, I started moving them to traditional notation. Musical Futures International advocates something very similar. In fact, they have these really cool Power Points in which animated chord chords show the piano, bass, ukulele, and guitar chords moving with the lyrics. 

Here's something that was controversial (to me), but once I wrapped my mind around it I really liked it. I have a guitar student who is a purist. He believes that students need to start off with the proper chords on full sized instruments because they need to stretch their hands and get used to quick changes. That's definitely true... for guitarists who love to practice for hours a day and will probably take grades 9 -> music. However, for my grade 6 who is taking music as an elective, and only has two classes available, learning the guitar in that short amount of time is very challenging. Musical Futures International advocates putting a piece of sponge under the first three strings of the guitar, then teaching the students the simplified chords. At first, this bothered me because I didn't want to teach the students something incorrect and then have to fix their hand positions later on (a.k.a. perfect practice makes perfect, right?). However, I realised that if the students still used the correct fingers in the simplified chords, then it'd be easier to move to the real chords later. ​

I could literally go on and on about how much I love Musical Futures International. In fact, I'm hoping to get them to run a workshop at Nanjing International School next year! However, I'm going to save that for another blog post (or ten).

At the same job alike (that I discussed below), the same amazing teacher was telling us about Musical Futures. She said she ran all her classes like workshops and they were extremely hands-on. One of the common complaints about the MYP is that class have the potential to turn into music appreciation classes about music instead of being hands-on classes doing music. Thus, I was really interested in what she was saying and immediately looked online to see what was what.

There are two Musical Futures and they are both from the UK. However, I got the low-down on this from one of the representatives, so I'll share as much as I can remember. The original Musical Futures was started as a grant-based organisation in the UK that was trying to motivate students in music classes. They found that students liked music but didn't like music classes and they were trying to reverse this trend. While focusing on UK students, they also started branching out throughout the world. When the grant came to an end, the UK branch now had to fund themselves, while the international branch wanted to remain open-source. This is why there are two Musical Futures right now; one caters specifically to the UK while the other has more of an international focus.  

This past week, I attended the introduction to Musical Futures International workshop in Hong Kong and was completely enthralled with what I discovered. Imagine if a group of IB educators sat down and said, "Let's make a really good music pedagogy to go with our assessment framework."  Imagine if Nanjing International School then looked at it and said, "Let's tweak it to fit our strategy / educational philosophy."  The result would be Musical Futures International.  Let me give you a few examples. At the workshop, they showed us the three types of knowledge that each student should learn. I found myself looking at slightly-differently-worded Criterion Ai, ii, and iii. Wow. A great IB fit.  Next, they showed us their five principles and I saw one of them was, "Student Voice and Choice."  Well, that's one of NIS' strategies. Meanwhile, the entire workshop was based on differentiation and inclusion, which are also part of NIS' strategy and mission statement. Even hear of, "Preaching to the choir?" That was my experience this weekend. Everything the workshop leaders said simply re-enforced the IB assessment framework with the NIS mission statement. Matches made in heaven. 

Now, why am I so excited about Musical Futures International? Because as a pedagogy, it really makes sense for international teachers with a high student turnover rate. Have you read my differentiation description on this blog? Stop for a second and go read it. It's a fun challenge to meet the needs of such a diverse student body, especially when music is an elective and kids pop in and out as they like throughout the the middle years. How do you have continuity of skills when one child has been with me for three years, one child is brand new, doesn't know music, and can't speak English, and one child took music in grade 5 and then not again until the last semester of grade 8? I had been doing the equivalent of music triage, or what I thought was music triage. Instead of focusing on music notation and moving towards performance, I was starting with performance and then working in music notation when appropriate. I had lots of little tricks and strategies to get kids on instruments as fast as possible. I was so happy when Musical Futures International also used a lot of strategies I was using, but tweaking them even further. I felt validated. It was a relief, to be honest. The workshop was really fun and engaging, and it made me want to do more, more, more. And in the midst of this, I knew, "Hey. I already do some of this stuff... I'm okay."

We had a Music job-a-like, back in March. One of the teachers from Suzhou brought some really scary resources. Scary as in... so amazing that she suddenly turned into some sort of goddess in my eyes. Each one was a PowerPoint of her entire unit. Title pages. Criteria. Deadlines. YouTube embedded videos. Worksheets. EVERYTHING. I was overwhelming. When I looked at these units, I felt like a first year teacher again. Then, I questioned how we can be working effectively through the creative cycle if the unit is so perfectly planned out. Where is the space for innovation, creativity, and teachable moments? 

Fast-forward to the summer. Sitting in a trailer (caravan) with no internet access, I decided to go through my own units and see if I couldn't "Power-Point" them (Power-Point has become my verb). It was pretty easy at first because I already had all the resources - I just had to drag them in. It was quick work, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself. However, once I started, I began to notice small problems. Some tweaks were needed to my units. Some lessons needed to be moved around. New activities. I found myself doing almost total overhauls of my tried-and-true units. And then I forgot about them as the summer went on and we began our transition back to China from holidays.

Cue the start of school. My main laptop died, but these Power Points were sitting in the cloud. I grabbed a loaner and opened up... organised, fun units. They are based on the Opus music textbooks. My grade eights are doing film scores at the moment. Before, the unit tended towards being more of a music appreciation unit before diving more into the practical aspects (Criterion A first, then B). However, this teacher from Suzhou advised us to think of each lesson as a workshop, instead of a lesson, and so I decided to put something practical and fun into every lesson. We started off with "The Last Emperor," which shows how music can set a film within a place and time. Reading (Criterion A). Then I transcribed a pentatonic piece for flute, violin, viola, clarinet, and trumpet and gave it to the kids in the class who could play instruments. Everybody else had either Chinese percussion instruments or G pentatonic xylophones. The class was really engaged and interested. I did a Kahoot quiz afterwards and found that the kids had pulled knowledge out of their performances. E.g. one of the questions asked which scale the film theme was based upon, and the majority knew it was G pentatonic because they had been pulling off their ^4 and ^7 bars every class.  When I said we were moving onto "James Bond," a loud cheer went up throughout the room. Now, I have the same instrumentalists in a practice room learning the orchestra part and I've got the rest of the class learning the melodic motif on guitars. We'll put them together on Monday. The kids are having fun, and so am I. 

​My experiment has been a success, and I'm going to continue 'Power-Pointing' the rest of my units for semester 2. 
Benefits:
- Everything is in one file and I don't have to go searching through folders
- I can walk in the door on Monday and know that I'm ready to go (even the YouTube videos are embedded and working properly)
- It's very easy to save my work to the cloud and to Atlas, because it's only one file
- I can screenshot or PDF the day's lesson and upload it to Seesaw so that the kids have our lesson notes before they walk into class. This is great because parents can see what their kids learned in the day's class and then watch the video of them performing and students needing support will automatically have the notes ready for careful reviewing
- It's pretty. As I've mentioned before... big kids like things to look nice as well. 
- I can upload their exam study guide the first day of class, and since it contains a vocabulary list, it helps the English Language Learners in their English for Cognitive Communication lessons.

The only thing that I'm not doing is giving timelines. I still need the flexibility to go through the creative cycle at the class' pace. 

Here's some pictures from my grade 10 unit, 'The Elements of Music.'

My clipart is purchased from Dancing Crayon Designs.

I've just had an email asking me about PYP assessments. I'm definitely not the expert in this area, since I haven't taught PYP in about 4 years. However, I do have the PYP Performing Arts teacher in the room beside me and I see what's coming out of her photocopier. 

Let's take the PYP production, for example. (And here is when I diverge into rumours, since it's just what I've seen in passing...)  The students learn to sing a song for the production, while in class. Towards the end of the rehearsal period, the students are assessed in class for their singing abilities. Can they sing this song? How are their rhythms, pitches, pronunciation, etc. Then, they go out and do the production. Some of them might not sing in production because some of them might be in the soundbooth or helping backstage. The production, of course, is filmed for parents and put on Vimeo. In the next two music classes, the students watch the entire show with reflection sheets in front of them and they need to answer questions. Was the singing clear? Were people using the correct blocking, etc? The reflection sheets are tailored to the age of the students, so if it's an Early Years student doing the reflection, then the teacher reads out the question and the students colour happy, neutral, or sad boxes. Meanwhile, the reflection sheets for grade 5s are much more complex. 

When I taught grade 5s, my assessments were often daily checklists. As the kids were in small groups working on their recorders, I had a checklist of things like:
- correct hand is on top
- air control gives a good tone
- rhythms and pitches are correct
- are they playing their own or a borrowed recorder
etc. 
I used Karate Recorder, which is a great curriculum (kids find it very motivating), and so I'd also simply look and see who was where in the curriculum. When it came time for reports, I had notes on learner skills (e.g. self-management) and academic skills (playing the recorder).

I hope this helps. 

This post is long over due. In fact, any post is long over due. I've just checked, and I haven't written anything since February 2, 2018. Over a year ago. I've come to realise that I don't have the passion needed for social media. My favourite bloggers put out articles twice a week, and I eagerly await them in my inbox. My current favourite vlogger only puts out videos every two weeks, and that schedule kills me with suspense. But me? If I put out a post every three months, then it's a good run. 

It's the same with emails (this is a massive apology!).  My friend Andy runs a fantastic blog called PYP PE with Andy.  In fact, he's the one who convinced me to setup this blog. He gave me excellent advice in the beginning, and the most important he stated was that you must respond to every email within 24 hours. He's a prolific poster, and as a result, he's become a motivational speaker who has given Ted talks. He's an amazing guy... and totally social media savy. Unfortunately, I don't have his passion. Normally, I forget that I have a blog, and then when I remember, I think, "Should I go on the treadmill, watch the latest episode of John Oliver, or write a blog post about I don't know what yet?" 

You are now thinking, "Wait a second... why did you write a blog if it's not your thing?" Well, it was my thing.  I did my masters at Boston University from 2010 - 2012, which was when I started this blog. I was still on the old MYP guide and my moderation results were coming back perfect, with high praises and no recommendations given. I was single. I had the time to make amazing posters and to hang out on a blog, making it look perfect. 

But then the new guide came out. We were told that everybody would be sent to training, but life intervened and it didn't happen. It meant that my team and I were left with no training and quite a bit of confusion over Criterion Aiii and Di. Then I adopted. Then I barely survived a house fire. Then my cousins, who are trained web developers, took a look at my site and told me it was 100% wrong and needed a total revamp. And suddenly, I was overwhelmed.   As you can see by the site, it's very pre-the-Next-Chapter. It talks about Developmental Workbooks, when it should be talking about process journals. The criteria on my sample assessments are all wrong. And yes, my cousins hate the colours and graphics. I feel like revamping would be a huge deal, and to be honest, I really like hanging out with my kid.  He's awesome. I would take credit for his awesomeness, but I adopted him at 3 years old, and he arrived awesome. We go hiking, and biking. We love kayaking, playing racquetball, and having picnics in parks. This week, I was teaching him how to rollerblade. 

Today, I thought, "That's it. This has to stop. I have to stop pretending that I have a website. People are emailing me for help, and I'm not responding well. I have to go online and say that this website is dead."  And then I logged on and saw my stats - I'm still getting 350+ people per day. 

This website is dormant. I check it maybe once a year. Maybe one day I'll become suddenly inspired and I'll revamp the entire thing. That'll probably happen when/if I ever get my MYP training upgrade. Until then, please read it with a discerning eye - not everything will be up-to-date or correct... and I might not answer your emails. Sorry!

As much as I want the kids to enjoy a never-ending round of creative cycles, I know that they need knowledge and skills in order to be fully, authentically successful in those cycles. That means there's a certain level of memorisation required. At the moment, my DP students have probably had five or six exams asking them to memorise the key signatures, in the past three years (gr 9 - 11), and they are still iffy on them. Meanwhile, my English Language Learner students always do poorly on my Criterion A assessments. Enter a book I received for Christmas - How We Learn, by Benedict Carey.

I'm only halfway through it, but I've learned enough to start prototyping some assessments in my class. In a nutshell, this is what I've learned so far:

- we tend to remember almost everything we've ever learned; however, all knowledge is stored in a retrieval system and much of it is systematically forgotten in order to keep our brains from exploding. Some knowledge is high value with high retrieval, some is high value with low retrieval, low value with high retrieval or low value with low retrieval.  When students cram for an exam the night before, they have high value with low retrieval, because the minute the exam is done, the information is now gone. The secret is how to move important information into the high retrieval set.

- In order to move information into the high retrieval set, we need to store that information in multiple locations in our brains. This is done through accessing it in high stress, interval situations in a variety of locations and settings. This point has two ideas, but I'll address the locations first.

•  If you want your brain to store important information in a variety of locations, you need to recall it in a variety of settings. This means, if you want to remember something important (like me trying to learn Chinese characters), you need to study one night in bright lights at the kitchen table in silence, but the next night in mood-lighting, with jazz, in the study, and the afternoon during a sunny day in the park. This way, when you recall the information, a triggered memory will help to pull the memory retrieval for you
• High stress situations featuring intervals? Studies from the early 1900s show that accessing information over staggered amounts of time increase memory retrieval, and that this is best done in assessment situations. At first glance, this is a 'no-brainer.' Everybody knows that studying over an extended period of time is more beneficial than cramming the night before. However, studies have shown that there are specific schedules for which memory retrieval is at its most efficient. If you need to prepare for an exam that is 2 1/2 months away, you need to study, and then put the material away for a full month. Then study, and then again two weeks later, and then a week later, and then two days later, and then the day before the exam, etc.  Academics wanted to know whether general study would suffice, and found out that, actually, exams are best for memory recall. And not just any exam... multiple choice exams are the best. (WHAT?!)
• Multiple choice assessments aid in studying. What a headline! Researchers found that students who studied from set notes had a lower retention because they did not need to engage in deeper level thinking that might have resulted in higher retention. The book's example was this - if you ask someone to study the name of the capital city of Australia, they would study, "Canberra." But... give them a multiple choice question that lists Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, and Canberra, and suddenly the student has to sit and ponder for a minute. One of these is the economic powerhouse of Australia, and another is the capital... which is which? 
• The last point, on this long topic, was on the value of a pre-test. (Again, the author was preaching to the choir, here. We all love pre-tests, right?) Studies showed that students given a pre-test performed better on assessments than control groups without pre-tests. Basically, the tests acted as a high-stress (high motivation) catalyst for entering information into a different section of the brain. 

What's my point?

Here's my prototype for this semester's learning.

My DP Music students have an exam in May of 2018. We've done Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque, and are now starting on Classical. Plus, they've done a variety of world cultures.  I'm going to start giving them interval-ed multiple choice tests throughout the next year. I'm going to use Kahoot because it's a) fast, b) fun and c) gives immediate assessment results to me. 

I've given my grade 6s a Kahoot pretest on general information about the history of rock, rock pioneers, and how to put together a rock ensemble. I downloaded their initial results from Kahoot. I'm going to give them the same quiz at different intervals throughout the semester, but under slightly different conditions. One time, I'll do it in the middle ensemble room; one time, I'll do it with the lights off using natural lighting; one time, I'll do it at the beginning of class, or maybe at the end of class. Then, I'll check the results of their final assessments versus last semester's grade 6 class (which is acting as my control). 

One question I had for myself was... would this be too time consuming? We all know teachers aren't supposed to work harder than their students (for efficiency sake); however, with Kahoot (shameless plug), the question generation is so fast that I can literally draw up a quiz in about 10 minutes. I've already set all my DP music quizzes for the next three months.

I'll revisit this topic in June, and hopefully I can share some good results with you. 

I've just gotten an email asking what Criterion B assessments I use for my grade 8 movie soundtracks unit. I'm really proud of this unit because it's a great blend of performance and composition, and the kids seem to really enjoy it. So basically, I have the luxury of time and so we do two creative cycles.

Creative Cycle 1: Symphonic Concert
This is just something I made up out of my head, to be honest. I don't know if it's actually "a thing." I had a friend who went to see Dr. Who In Concert, and loved it. I started doing research and saw that there's Bugs Bunny in Concert, Back to the Future In Concert, Les Miz In Concert, etc. People love the soundtracks so much that they want to see them performed live. So why not do this in class? I called them Symphonic Concerts... though now that I type this, I think the name is all wrong... hrm... a reflection for next semester...

Anyhow, the kids have to pick a movie clip they like and decide which emotions they want to represent on screen. Then they need to get into small ensembles and perform a piece that would match the screen. Next, they go into a movie editing software, such as iMovie or Final Cut, and they place their recorded performance as a Picture-in-Picture against the movie clip. 

The kids love this task, and there are such interesting interpretations. Here's some examples...
- a serious group - they took a sad movie trailer and added very depressing music to it. Very effective.
- the silly group - they took the Jaws attack from the movie and played "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid.
- another silly group - they did a screen capture of someone playing "Plants vs. Zombies," but they wanted the audience to identify with the zombies instead. While the zombies were fighting the plants, the group played O Fortuna from Carmina Burana; when the zombies won and ate the brains, the group played, "Happy" by Farrell Williams. 

Creative Cycle 2: Composition
Thank you Aardman Productions! Several years ago, they posted four wonderful videos to the BBC Teachers website. These videos were stripped down to only voices. No foley effects or music. The purpose was for students to create their own soundtracks. The teacher package came with storyboards, as well.  Thus, creative cycle 2 is composing music using GarageBand.

Step 1: I have the kids go to www.bensound.com and download royalty free music in five different genres. They pick their favourite of the video clips and use GarageBand to export the videos using each the different genres. Then they do a reflection on how the different pieces manipulated the emotions of what what shown on screen. Basically, "What would this clip feel like with scary music? Or sad music? Or happy music?" Once they know what style of music they want, then it's time to learn GarageBand.

Step 2: MIDI Controllers, musical typing, or www.noteflight.com.  How the kids compose is completely up to them. Kids with a lot of advanced knowledge and skills will often go to Finale or www.noteflight.com and will compose using notation. This is good, but it does mean that the music doesn't always fit with what is on the screen. Once it is exported to a MIDI file, the kids have to manipulate it a bit to fit what is on the screen. Kids who have medium skills in music will often use the musical typing feature in GarageBand. This is a computer keyboard that corresponds to MIDI pitches in GarageBand. For the absolute beginners, they use MIDI Controllers. I have one boy, this year, who was absolutely panicked about composing. While he is a wiz at ukulele, he doesn't know notation. I gave him a MIDI controller. On his own, he went to YouTube and started watching video tutorials on how to compose EDM (electronic dance music) in GarageBand. His first attempt was great!

Step 3: Feedback. I normally give the kids a class or two to experiment and fiddle in GarageBand. Then I start having interviews and uploading their feedback to Veracross.

Here's the final evaluation sheet for you:

​* Showing proof of using the creative cycle. *

This is really easy when the kids are performing on instruments. I love Seesaw (www.seesaw.me) and use it all the time. The kids and parents love it, too. Basically, it's like a closed version of Facebook in which you can post audio, videos, images, etc. As the kids are discussing their ensembles and making plans, I'm taking sneaky videos. I also video their progress. Then, immediately (and I mean, within seconds), they can log onto their mobile devices and see what they did in class. They have immediate evidence of Criterion C ii and iii. Their playing gives them evidence of Criterion B.

How do you collect evidence when composing? I'm having the kids take screen captures every 15 - 20 minutes, and to also 'Share file to disk,' from Garageband. Then I'm having them annotate their screen captures. Nice and quick, just, "Here I was experimenting with using trumpets. I decided against them because they don't match well with the bassoon." And an audio file.

Conclusion:
It's always fun doing a unit that both the kids and the teacher enjoys! This one is great.