Chapter 13 Points of Interest

Assessment

POI #1: Assessing students at the start of their musical program.

I agree with this view very much so. I would say that assessing your students as soon as possible is the key factor in having a successful musical career. Assessment is a surefire way to notice flaws and praise success.

I love the fact that you can start assessment early on in the musical development of the student. I think a difference that needs to be distinguished between assessment and nitpicking. It is important that one assess their students and does not nitpick. Assessment is done with the goal of improvement in mine. Nitpicking is done to point out flaws, no matter how minor they are.

Students should not be nitpicked, because then there will be no self confidence instilled in the child. If a student is assessed their are learning how to identify issues that are not up to a standard. It is now about how badly a student is doing, but how much success they are having.

POI #2 Continuous assessment

This POI stuck out to me because I feel that assessment should always be continuous because assessment can never stop. It is the goal of the musician to convey their emotions through their music, as it is a dancer's job to show their thoughts through their dance, or an artist through his canvas. If you are to continually grow as a musician, you cannot stop thinking about how to improve, and you will continually assess yourself.

The section that I got this POI from was teacher assessment of students. Again if you want your band to improve and grow you need to continually assess it. In addition you also need to continually asses yourself as a teacher. I do not see why a teacher would stop assessing themselves let alone their students.

I love finding new ways of teaching subjects to children, and I find that I need to asses myself more often than I assess my students. Because my students learn from me, I need to make sure that I am on the top of my game so that they can be on the top of theirs.

POI #3 The children talked about in the chapter.

I got the impression that this chapter was focusing more on students in a high school setting. Many of the questions that should be used to help children perform higher thinking seemed geared to those children who have an understanding of music history in the context of a high school education.

For instance, interpretation of a piece of music feels like a more suited idea for an older students who is able to comprehend the slightly confusing history of the war of the roses. Justifying a choice also seems like an idea suited for the high school classroom. Again I feel that a well rounded knowledge base is needed to answer the questions posed.

However, I may be talking myself into a hole. I have not tried to ask a child to devise their own criteria for performance or to identify key ideas when they compose a piece of music. Maybe I am a bit naive in thinking that an elementary student cannot answer these questions. But, I feel that these types of questions need to be posed when a student has a stronger grasp of music, one that comes from experience and not one from a classroom.

Lang Lang on an iPad