10/19/06 Intro to Music-in-Education
Larry Scripp’s Intro to Music-in-Education class is an obvious forum for exposing students to the various aspects of teaching, but a closer look shows that not only do we hear about these methods through Larry’s teaching, we also experience them in the way he teaches us, and we experiment with them by teaching our own lessons in front of the class.
In these past two weeks we have been using different colored plastic cups to represent either rhythm or pitch, and creating impromptu performances led by members of the class. Follow the link at the bottom of the article to see Alex Powell directing the class in a pitch exercise. He assigned a pitch to the first cup, and assigned the second scale degree to the second cup. When he pointed to the third, we deduced that it would mean to sing the third scale degree. The confusion came when he assigned scale degree 5 to the fourth cup, and then directed us to sing back down the row. We mistakenly sang scale degree 4 instead of 3 for the third cup. Alex made us aware of our mistake, and we corrected ourselves. In a later discussion, Larry showed how Alex might have corrected our confusion by starting from the first cup and ascending to verify the correct scale degree on the third cup. I think this was a most valuable lesson – that it’s better to allow students to correct their mistake by verification, rather than simply telling them they’re wrong or correcting the mistake for them.
-Kristen
October 19th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
Your anecdote reminds me of one of the first times I started noticing that, as learners, we learn by teaching ourselves. The notion of verifying what mistakes have been made on your own, and then slowing down the process to eliminate future mistakes is also the basis of what Larry calls “the stop method” — a practice method he teaches in Solfege class. The idea with Stop Method is that, before a mistake is made, you stop immediately to verify that you’ve erred … then, after getting your bearings set again, you can continue on. Some of the confusion that comes with Stop Method is the speed at which things happen; it can be hard to separate the process from its action. But, thanks to MIE classes, we can take the time to explore what learning processes are actively taking place.
October 24th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Stop Method is great! I have heard Larry Scripp discuss this method, and each time he talks about it, I get more and more intrigued. I’ve only tried the stop method a few times in my own practice, but every time, I’ve seen instant results. Try it! It’s awesome!
-Brynn
November 3rd, 2006 at 11:10 am
I forgot that I wrote about Stop Method in a portfolio I made, back when I was a Solfege TA and doing a MIE Guided Internship. I’ve posted the most universally-applicable parts of my portfolio on my website, such as grading rubrics, strategies, and reference materials. Anyways, if anyone has the chance to check them out, please share any comments here. Thanks!
November 5th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
I really enjoyed the cups excercise. Not only was it a good way to demonstrate that speech was not needed to teach a class, but it was also very helpful in my own lesson that I taught to the class. My piece of music, “The Serpent” by Lee Hoiby, involves a lot of changing asymmetrical from 7/8 to 5/8 time. I was able to incorporate his idea of cups representing rhythms to teach my piece music to the class.
November 6th, 2006 at 3:42 am
Erin, I’d love to see how that worked! If someone took video in class of it, maybe we can post it for others to see, and you can tell us more about what you did. Thanks for commenting!
May 1st, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Dear All,
Has anyone put the “Stop Method” into practice while giving private lessons? Does it save time? Can students quickly comprehend it?
ciao