My school (Nanjing International School) has gone in a bit of a radical direction this year by implementing strategy leaders in the primary and upper grades. It's a win-lose situation, to be honest, because I really miss my department head. However the benefits have been really great so far. One of our strategy leaders is named Luiz Mello and he comes up with really brilliant educational ideas. 

So here was my problem: Normally, I have classes of between 16 - 21 students and I run a beginner band program in grade 9. However, because of scheduling conflicts, I ended up with 4 students who are already highlight proficient on instruments. If the purpose of the unit was to act as an equaliser to get all students ready for the now-defunct grade 10 moderation, then what would I do with 4 kids who can already play their instruments very well? 

First, Luiz asked me what the main, core purpose of the unit was. That's easy - Identities and Relationships, focusing on health. How to learn an instrument in a safe manner. Really, a springboard into them learning how to learn. Couldn't they still do that? He reasoned. But I questioned the summative assessment, and that's when Luiz led me to a fantastic idea - Couldn't they do a one-man band featuring their main instrument and their newly learnt instrument, and show how they are aware of playing positions, breathing exercises, etc., on both? 

Well, this is my first time going through this iteration of the creative cycle, and I'm excited to see how it goes.  The end product should look something like this: Bohemian Rhapsody.

We talked through the task sheet using the smartboard, and then I typed up our notes and included the assessment criteria.  I'm attaching our notes below. The Word document has beautiful colours, but the 'ole copy/paste takes away my colours in Weebly (shrug). 

Grade 9 : Beginner Band Creative Cycle
Our bodies change, for better or for worse, when we start playing instruments.
Global Context: An Inquiry into identities and relationships (health)
Related Concepts: Role, Play & Composition
Factual Question: How does playing an instrument affect the human body?
Conceptual Question: Why are proper playing positions integral to my health and well-being?
Debatable Question: How can some pain be beneficial?
 
75% of your mark - written - process journal (A, C, & D) - 25% of your mark - practical - performing (B)
Your book is super important!
 
 
Your Task
    You have been studying how to play an instrument in a healthy way. You have been doing breathing exercises and ensuring that you maintain good posture and hand positions. Now demonstrate what you learned in a practical application – put together an ensemble using your new instrument. This task must be video-recorded so that your posture and hand positions are evident.   
 
For an example of this task, please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsrolRORJT4
 
Planning Your Creative Cycle
 
Di: Inspiration

• From what you know about the new instrument you learned, what type of music would suit it best? In which musical direction / inspiration could you take a personal interpretation? Do you want to use Band-in-a-Box or GarageBand to add extra sounds?
• construct meaning and transfer learning to new settings

 
Cii: Brainstorming & Mind-Mapping

• evidence / proof of taking a long time to think of what piece to do; don’t simply pick the first piece you can think of, but rather do a really detailed search of many different possibilities
• Go find sheet music for both of your chosen instruments; decide whether you need sheet music for extra instruments
• You are only allowed to add extra instruments once you are finished and only if they are finished or not involved (a.k.a. please don’t pull other musicians away from their own projects.)
• demonstrate a range and depth of creative-thinking behaviours

 
Ci: Making a Plan

• What piece did you pick?
• Which instruments are you going to play?
• Which instrument is playing the melody line?
• ‘personal interpretation’ is what you want the piece to sound like. Remember à If your performance sounds exactly like the original, then you haven’t used your creativity to come up with a personal interpretation.
• develop a feasible, clear, imaginative and coherent artistic intention

 
 
Practicing Your Creative Cycle
 
Bi: Can you play your ‘beginner’ instrument? (SmartMusic)
-    Can you play the new piece you have chosen?
Bii: Can you apply your skills in an ensemble?

• Practicing
• Make sure you are on SeeSaw; Miss Keus will take constant, regular videos and images of you
• Take progress videos on your own
• demonstrate the acquisition and development of the skills and techniques of the art form studied

 
MEANWHILE
ciii - Reflections showing that you were problem solving in creative and interesting ways

• evidence of using creative thinking (see creative thinking behaviours list from your process journal)
• demonstrate a range and depth of creative-thinking behaviours
• demonstrate the exploration of ideas to shape artistic intention through to a point of realization.

dii - Feedback from teacher, friends, family, and peers. Also, give feedback to others.

• feedback is helpful, kind and specific. It helps you to improve.
  •           That was so bad.
    •           Your personal interpretation isn’t evident and your timing is off. Try using a
    •          
• create an artistic response that intends to reflect or impact on the world around them
• critique the artwork of self and others.

 
Polishing & Performing Your Creative Cycle
 
Filming:

• Decide which instrument is your ‘scratch track.’ (Try to make your melody line be your scratch track.)
• Record yourself using GarageBand * You don’t need headphones. BUT it would be wise to record using headphones and a metronome. This will allow you to use GarageBand or Band-in-a-Box at a later stage should you decide to go a different direction mid-creative cycle.
• When you are ready to record the real performance for real, borrow Miss Keus’ DP recorder and record using a microphone and an XLR cable. Record yourself using your iSight camera as well.
• Use iMovie or Final Cut to put together your video. Export it as a video file and then import it into GarageBand and/or Logic Pro to ensure that the sound / music is high quality.
• demonstrate the application of skills and techniques to create, perform and/or present art.

 
Evaluating Your Creative Cycle
 
At the very end…
diii - Final evaluation and play your video in the school assembly

• critique the artwork of self and others. 

I haven't done the training for the Next Chapter yet. Since it's almost 2017, and it came out in 2014, I really need to stop calling it Next Chapter and simply call it MYP. I'm happy that we got an extra year of grade 10 moderation, under the new MYP guide, because that served as my professional development. What I wanted most feedback on was the difference between Criterion A3 and D1. While there was no specific mention of it in my moderation, my report came back with no changes or suggestions, so I assume I'm on the right track. 

While clearing out the 'dump' folder on my desktop, I came upon a mental meandering about those criteria that I had done with my grade 10s.*  I've decided to share my thoughts with you today.

Just to give you some background... the unit is a grade 10 soundtracks unit. We open up with Criterion A: Knowledge and Understanding. There, we learn about the power of silences, mickey-mousing, source music, underscoring, the history of music soundtracks, leitmotifs, voice as an instrument, etc. Then, the students have to compose 1:40 of music based on an Aardman's production clip that has all sound removed except for the voices. 

One day, at the start of the creative cycle, we were talking about what creative thinking looks like:

(I love to colour as I type)

But back to Criterion A. Criterion A is how students use their knowledge of movie soundtracks to compose while Criterion D is more how the movie stimulus influenced them. Therefore, in my grade 10 moderation, I broke these strands into two distinct ideas:
1. Is the composition's technique correct? Criterion A.
2. Does the composition match the vision shown on the screen? Criterion D. 

Here is an example. Let's say the student writes...
"While watching the clip, I noticed that the penguin character is very evil, and that he's introduced during a clap of lightning. I had to decide whether I wanted to play this clip as a parody, with funny music, or whether I wanted to follow the action on the screen and make the character evil as well. But is the character evil or very evil? I could maybe use minor chords in a lower register to make him sound evil, but perhaps using a series of diminished chords, repeated in the upper register would make him sound super evil."   For me, that's Criterion D because his/her artwork is based upon a stimulus. He is composing a response to what he sees on the screen.

Now let's say the student writes...
"There doesn't appear to be any sources of music in this clip, so I'm going to use underscoring music instead. There should be two pieces of music present - when the dog turns off the light and then when the penguin starts to change the robot pants. I think the best way to show the difference between the two scenes would be to have a period of silence when the thunder rolls. Silence is important because it emphasizes the action on the screen. As the penguin starts to build the robot, I'm going to have a choir come in and sing some really creepy, "ooooh" over top of the drill sound."  That would be Criterion A because his/her artwork is based on the technical knowledge gained in the class, and the composition is highlighting their understanding in how to apply it. 

So that's now how I separate A3 and D1. Sure, I've seen a document floating around that says A is head-knowledge and D is heart-knowledge, but how can teachers criterion-assess someone's heart? It's too fuzzy and vague. We always have to go find proof.  That's why, for me, I've separated the strands like this:

Grade 6 Compositions
D: Heart Knowledge: After studying Chinese drumming and watching several live performances, how have you used them as a stimulus to create your own drumming ensemble?
A: Head Knowledge: Which instruments are involved in Chinese ensembles? How do costumes play a roll? Which rhythms are stereotypical? How do the different non-pitched percussion instruments interacting with each other throughout? How do hand positions influence not only the sound but the look of the ensemble? 

Grade 7 Performance
D: Heart Knowledge: We have looked at how locations inspire musicians to create and perform because often the best music grows out of personal experience. How has this unit inspired you to perform a particular song? How is the location of this song special to you?
A: Head Knowledge: How does the form and orchestration of the song emphasize the lyrics? In your personal interpretation of the song, how will your group arrange it to highlight the meanings you found?

Grade 10 Compositions
D: Heart Knowledge: After studying rondeau, how have you used them as a stimulus to create your own? 
A: Head Knowledge: How do you compose a rondeau? What is its structure? Which key does each section use? How are phrases built?

Those are just a few of my ideas. I'd love to hear how you are working with A3 and D1. If you have any comments, please leave them below - I'd love to discuss with you. 

​*I have a SmartBoard (love it!) and I often type as I talk. This helps me keep a record of what we are discussing, lets me copy and paste to our homework programme (Veracross), and helps the learning support and English language learners to have visual support for the lesson. 

My grade 10s are doing a jazz unit at the moment. This, in itself is not amazing. What is amazing is that I'm enjoying teaching it. You see, until recently, I really hated jazz. (How is it even possible for a music teacher, of all people, to hate jazz?!?!?)

When I was in my undergrad, my friends and I attended a jazz piano master class. It was my very first exposure to jazz - ever - and so I didn't really know what to expect. Pianist after pianist sat down and played music that I could only describe as noise. It was like they'd taken their hands, slammed them down in dissonant, random manners, and played whichever rhythms fell on the keys. I sat in disbelief. Afterwards, the jazz adjudicator would stand up and say something cool and suave, like, "Yeah man. That was smooth. That was hip." Again. I sat in disbelief. That unfortunate incident started my dislike of jazz, which unfortunately remained for almost 15 years. Then came my masters. I decided that enough was enough, I was a grown up and it was time to like jazz. I purposely took a course in jazz composition and arranging from Boston University. Then I filled my iTunes library with jazz and made it become my daily listening routine. I was working on the assumption that the more I listened to, the more it would become my new normal, and that one day I would even like it. In school, I started encouraging kids who seem to have music in their souls. I started throwing jazz lead sheets at these kids, recommending listening tracks, and giving them jazz performance gigs. Soon, the music department started to think that jazz was cool, and these kids started to get some street red. Did my experiment work? I think it did. Last week, I was chill-axing to some music and quite enjoying it, and suddenly I realised that it was free jazz! It was that dissonant, chaotic mess that I used to hate! But now I was liking it! ... and just in time, too, since this is my first cohort of DP Music, and we've got An American in Paris by Gershwin! (Luckily I quite like jazz now, and am happy to dive into it!)

My grade 10 jazz unit has a key concept of aesthetic, with related concepts of interpretation, play, and composition. (Do you see where I'm going with this?) 
Statement of Inquiry: Jazz is a polarising genre.
Factual Question: How can chaos be structured?
Conceptual Question: Who determines what sounds good?
Debatable Question: Why is it impossible to hate jazz?

(I like the last question, because I do think that it is impossible. Even when I professed to dislike it, people would say, "But what about Gershwin?" and I'd respond, "Well, obviously I'm not talking about Gershwin!!!!" LOL.)

We've watched the PBS documentary on the history of jazz. We've played the 12 bar blues. We've studied the modes. We've played ImprovPathway's improvisation exercises (the kids enjoyed that!). Now they are arranging jazz standards for small ensembles. They need to give me a lead horn, a second horn, a horn doing accents and ornaments, rhythm piano and guitar, bass, and drums. This needs to be done from a jazz fake book that comes with a straight melody (meaning, they've got to use anticipations, delays, and non-chord tones to turn it into a jazzy piece without losing the original melody line). Has the task been successful? I would say yes and no. Yes, it was very successful because the music coming out is very cool. The only problem is classroom management - I think next time we need to have pairs instead of threes because there was always an excuse why one person wasn't doing much work. Next year I'll tweak it, but not remove it because it did work really well.

I'm uploading the task sheet and final evaluation. 
​

Here's a late Christmas present for you - my grade 7 composition rubric. Now that the holidays are over... and I have a few days more until school starts... I'm just finishing up a few reports. Time for grade 7. I went searching for the rubric that I gave the kids, gave it a few tweaks, and have uploaded it to the blog. It's in the rubric section, but I'm also popping it onto the blog for those who don't want to go searching for things.

The unit is attempting to be a transdisciplinary unit for grade 7 Humanities' Tourism unit. In Humanities, the kids get into groups of 2 or 3 students and plan a tourism booth that promotes a particular country. In music, we've been looking at how locations provide inspirations for musicians. Our Criterion A "hooks" focused on "Frankfurt, I'm Sorry," by Spirit of the West. In this song, the band sings about how when they first went to Frankfurt, they hated it a lot, but then realised they were wrong and wanted to apologise. Next, we looked at The Beatles' "Back in the U.S.S.R.," which is actually a joke song written with The Beach Boys when the two bands were on holidays in India. For the first creative cycle, the kids had to choose a song about a location and perform it for the class. They choose Sweet Home Alabama (America) and Verde Vino (Brazil), etc. For the second creative cycle, we looked at lyrics and different songwriting techniques to help get messages across. The kids *loved* the lesson on why Eminem is one of the greatest lyricists of our time. Finally, they had to get into groups of two and compose a piece of music about a specific place.

Why do I say we are "attempting" to be transdisciplinary? It's because our school works on the semester system for some subjects (including music) and has electives for some subjects (including music). This means that some kids may not choose music or may choose it in the wrong semester. We just figure... if the kids take music in the first semester, they enter Humanities in second semester already knowing how to write a song, but if they take it in the second semester, they will be in music when Humanities starts their tourism exhibition. Perfect timing on way, pretty good timing another. 

This is me procrastinating on my reports... I'd better get back at it!

I'm writing exam study guides at the moment for my grades 9 - 12s. Instead of searching for theory graphics on the internet, I've just decided to make up my own. I'm dropping them into my blog because I don't have a page specifically for theory. 

We are an inclusive school with a very large English Language Learner population. Yesterday I went to Learning Support coach and asked for some advice, and he suggested that I give an illustrated study guide instead of my normal prose. He said this way he could also help the kids if they should come into his office in the next few weeks. Done! So here is my rough and ready study guide. I've sectioned the criteria like this:

Criterion Ai: General music knowledge. This might or might directly relate to what they are doing on their instruments. I consider this to be the "grammar" part of learning. Sure, they might be playing treble clef instruments, but when they get to DP music, they are going to need to know the alto and tenor clefs. 
Criterion Aii: Knowledge in original context. Now we have music terms that they have directly seen in their method books (Standard of Excellence). This is now placing music in the most original of contexts for them --- in their very own playing. They've seen ties and slurs in their sheet music... can they remember the difference?
Criterion Aiii: Knowledge through their own artwork. This, for me, is the creative cycle. My kids are just finishing up their creative cycles now. I've differentiated for them, so they are all on different pieces. I have some advanced students doing trios, I've got some still doing the Standard of Excellent accompanied solo pieces, and I've got a few students who are on a modified program and are working on completely different books. Do they know which clef their music uses? Do they have repeat signs? What's their time signature? 

​I'm going to attach the study guide, but if you just want the images I've made, I'm including them below.

I've had a really interesting year. In some ways, it's been the best year of my life. This was, after all, the year that I adopted my son. In other ways, though, it's been the worst year of my life. Two days after enduring a trip to my son's village - in 500+ pollution - to renounce his citizenship, we lost our home in a house fire. So this is another reason why the site hasn't been updated very much. The other reason is that I haven't had the time or motivation to really, REALLY dive into the new MYP guide. Last week, though, the school gave us plenty of time during our INSET week to really focus on the guide and to start changing all our units. So at the moment, I'm reading "Making Thinking Visible," by Ron Ritchhart. He came to our school last year for a conference and was really inspirational. Many of our teachers have latched onto his great work and I'm seeing really fantastic examples of deep thinking throughout the school. It's also time to tweak the parent handbooks, so I'm using this opportunity to go through and totally overhaul all my work. Perfect timing, since I'm going to a Job-a-Like in Shanghai on Monday. I'm going to take my curriculum overhaul document with me and see what people say. I've got questions... like...
1. Do debatable inquiry questions tend to start off as yes or no?
2. What is the difference between C2 and C3 in level 3? 
3. If A and D are paired, then how can you differentiate between the emotional response to a stimulus and the intellectual processing that went behind it? (Thus the Ron Ritchhart...)
Here's my first draft... please feel free to give me any and all comments. I'm not precious about it!

Nanjing International School is very progressive when it comes to teacher professional development. Teachers are often sent away on courses, true, but there is a huge focus on in-house learning as well. Sometimes this means job-a-likes, where other similar subject-teachers from different schools are invited to come share best practices. Sometimes it means bringing in big name speakers, like when Dylan Wiliam and Ron Ritchhart came last year, or Ewan Macintosh this year. At the moment, we are in the middle of our PLTs, which stands for Professional Learning Teams. The teachers are given choices of a variety of different learning topics to study for the entire year. They might be effective feedback, or visible thinking, or unit planning, etc. This year, I've chosen to go into the writing workshop. The fact is, only 25% of IB music is based on practical playing. The rest is sheer paperwork. Criterion A is knowledge & understanding (tests, reports, etc), Criterion C is exhibiting creative thinking behaviours (which still need to be recorded for evidence in the process journals) and Criterion D is responding, which is responding to stimulus in the journals and doing final evaluations. So writing is really important in MYP Music. 

Before my maternity leave, I wrote a blog post asking for help with my process journals. My biggest problem is that some process journals are fantastic and some are ... well... less than stellar. I want to know how to see general improvement. Unfortunately, there's little or no research out there. I went to see my PLT leader yesterday to discuss my conundrum, and she ran me through the 5 Whys.  This is an activity that was suggested by Ewan Macintosh in order to drill down and find root causes of problems. So our conversation went something like this:

Why do you want to study writing?
Because the writing is inconsistent in the process journals.

Why is it inconsistent in the music journals?
Because not all kids are motivated in write in their journals.

Why aren't all kids motivated to write in their journals?
I don't think they all fully understand the criteria.

Why don't they fully understand the criteria?
Because I don't fully understand the criteria.

BINGO! Root cause of the problem found!

So this is my plan for this year's professional learning. I'm going through Criteria C & D with a fine-toothed comb to try and understand them, and then to effectively transfer that knowledge to my students. I'm starting with Criterion C because I want to know what evidence of creative thinking looks like. For example, a group of my grade 10s have just put together an ensemble that completely blew me away, it was so interesting and creative and cool... but how do I collect evidence of those creative thinking behaviours, especially since I need to send away that evidence for moderation? The goal is that once I fully understand how to show evidence of creative thinking behaviours, and once the kids understand what they need to do, they will be more motivated to write in their journals because they'll have more confidence and know-how.

So let's get started. Problem no.1 in creative thinking: Having a positive attitude towards challenges (That's from the IB's official list of creative thinking behaviours). A lot of times kids know their ensembles are going pear-shaped, but they can't figure out why, so they don't know how to think creatively / brainstorm to solve the problems. So let's start by teaching kids how to drill down and find the root causes of problems in their ensembles.

    I'm fortunate that I work with a really amazing blogger - Andy Vasily of PYP PE With Andy. Today I sat down to 'shoot the breeze' with him and ended up having a very long, philosophical talk about blogging in general but process journals specifically. I told him that I'm generally really happy with my process journals, that there's a large percentage of kids who hand in good books. However, there's always a small portion of kids who hand in something like 4 pages after a semester worth of learning. And then there's the English Language Learners (ELL) kids whose reflections are narrative and/or short simply because of language issues.  How can I better support those kids? Andy gave me some words of wisdom.  He said that reflection is a cross-curricular skill that improves learning and that process journals are a tool for learning. He told me to move away from the concept of 'music' process journals and just to think about process journals as transdisciplinary learning tools.  How can I motivate these students - to lead them in understanding the purpose of a process journal and to use them as learning tools?  I'm going to start with showing real-world examples.
    Last year, Peter Brown - an author / illustrator - came to our school for Book Week and showed his process journal to the Arts students in MYP. I spoke to the kids afterwards about how authentic and real it was to see a published author using a process journal as a tool.  Last summer, I was taking notes on my Taiko drumming lessons; my instructor said, "Oh, I have a book like that, too!" She pulled out a huge, ratty binder filled with every thought, idea, reflection, etc., she'd had about Taiko drumming. I said to her, "This is an amazing process journal!" This weekend, I was in the local German Bakery when I ran into a parent studying a book very carefully. He showed me his notebook, which turned out to be a very, very cool process journal. He's the guitarist in a local expat band. His book has chords, chord progressions, song structures, repertoire lists, lists of potential songs, notes about gigs, and more. He told me that people initially questioned why he was doing so much work, but that later his book proved to be very helpful for the band.  He was the keeper of the knowledge. He knew what songs the band had done, and which songs were coming up. He knew who was soloing when.  I told Andy about this and Andy said, "That parent was learning. His book was an organisation of knowledge and an area for reflection." Again, Andy went back to the point - it wasn't so much that Ken had a 'music' process journal as much as it was that Ken was organising his learning through reflection.  I saw that Ken's book would have been equally valid in a science room or a Humanities class.  And so would Bonnie Soon's (Taiko) or Peter Brown's.
    My grade 6s have been asking me when they need to start reflecting in their DWs. We haven't started the creative cycle yet, so all of our assessments are purely formative at this point. However, I think I've been going about things using the wrong philosophy. This week, I'm going to start talking to the kids about:
1) Organising learning
2) Reflecting to improve
3) Real world examples
First step? I've already arranged for Ken (the parent) to come in and give a talk to my grade 11s. 

Sometimes in life, to improve your practice, you need to dig deeper into your philosophy / theory. 
    

Nanjing International School believes that all teachers should be constantly learning and improving their teaching practices. As such, we are put into Professional Learning Teams (PLTs) based around a set of themes. For example, a theme could be improved writing skills, creativity in the classroom, integration of technology, etc.  Last year I worked on a team that was looking at unit design; I, specifically, wanted to see how I could make my Criterion A: Knowledge/Understanding more motivating and interesting. This year, I've been put in the writing group, which at first seemed like a strange choice for a music teacher.  However, I wanted to see whether I could see improvement in the kids' developmental workbooks / process journals.  Every year I get really good journals; every year I get really bad journals.  As always, there's always a wide range of abilities in the classroom. Some kids use the journals are authentic tools to help them grow; other kids use it to 'jump through the hoops' and get enough points on their band descriptors; and others just don't really bother.  These last kids have no plans for their performances, rarely reflect, offer very little evidence of responding to feedback, etc.  So how can I improve the workbooks? How can I get kids to see what the book is a 'tool' to help them.  Not just something that we have to do, like at the end of every lesson we have to do our developmental workbooks. If we could get the kids to really utilise and love the DWs, then their PPP journals would be a natural extension.  So that's my goal.
    I got an email from my PLT leader asking us all to bring some research to help the group. I started researching on JSTOR, with absolutely no success.  If I type in 'writing' and 'journal,' then I get primary articles on improving basic writing skills. If I type in 'writing' and 'journal' and 'high school,' then I get articles on the American drop-out rate of youths (?).  If I type in 'music' and 'journal,' then I get the names of American journals.  If I type in 'process journal,' then I get the process of writing - brainstorming, outlining, editing, revising, and publishing.  If I give up and go to a search engine and type in 'developmental workbooks,' I get my own website (LOL).  So today the coordinator for the PLTs came to see me to brainstorm my problem. He suggested that I take this to social media, to ask for help for you all. 

    Do you have articles / research that support writing in scrapbooks / developmental workbooks / process journals? Strategies can come later, but at the moment I need some solid empirical data on how and why journals are used as pedagogical tools. Then, later, I'll start asking for your feedback about strategies.

If you want to chat about this, please leave some comments and we'll get a dialogue going. Thanks!