Teaching For Musical Understanding, Jackie Wiggins

The second chapter of the Wiggins book describes Piagets theory of constructivism. This is the
primary theory upon which our entire project is based. Constructivism is the idea that people learn by
constructing their own knowledge of the world. When they are provided with new information, they must
assimialate and accommodate the information in their own minds. When teachers give only direct
instruction, there is no ways for learners to organize information into their own minds or for teacher to
check to make sure learners have organized it correctly into their own minds. In a constructivist teaching
model, teachers set up activities for learners to explore and discover things on their own, reflecting on
their experiences, therefore making sure they have organized it correctly in their mind. In our opening
lesson, students will discover how music can change the meaning of text. They will be given one stanza of
a peom to set to music without seeing the whole poem to understand its meaning. Their music will need
to fit the meaning that they think the text has. After students see the entire poem, they will see how the
music of each stanza changed its meaning and did not support the overall meaning of the text. This is a
constructivist activity because students discover how music can change the meaning of text. This is
different than a behaviorist classrom where students would have been told at the beginning of the lesson
that music can change the meaning of text without getting to discover this concept on their own. My
individual lesson plan is also built on the idea of constructivism. My objective is that students will
understand how to represent literary themes and characters through music. Students will also learn how
to develop musical themes in a composition. In a behaviorist classroom, I might do something like giving
students a list of techniques classical composers use to develop themes and then having them look at
these examples in music and identify which technique was used. In my lesson, however, students
compose musical themes. They are then presented with the musical problem of how they would
represent how the fighting families feels about Romeo and Juliets love. They have a need to know how to
put these two musical themes together to support the story. They will discover that in order to play the
musical themes at the same time, the tonality and meter of one might need to be changed to fit the other.
They might also discover that if they want to play one in the style of the other, they will need to alter
dimensions of one to fit the other. They will be discovering why a composer would develop a theme and
what needs to be done in order to do this. This would allow them to come up with their own ways of
developing themes rather than limiting them to techniques used by others. On page 45, Wiggins
describes that music learning should empower learners with musical understanding so that they can
become musically proficient and eventually musically independent of their teachers. By letting them
explore why they would develop a theme and solving the problems that arise as they try to do this, they
learn how to compose music on their own rather than just following a teachers instructions. This activity
is also process-based rather than product-based, another aspect of constructivist learning. Im sure that if
I gave the students a list of development techniques, they could follow the rules and produce better
developments, but they would not understand why they were doing what they were doing.
In a behaviorist model, I would have flipped the last two activites of my lesson. In my lesson,
learners first try developing musical themes on their own, discovering the need and what problems arise.
Learners then listen to a piece of music that develops musical themes and will therefore understand why a
composer made the changes he/she did. In a behaviorist model, students would have first listened to the
way a composer developed a musical theme and then modeled these techniques in a composition.
The beginning of my lesson also allows learning to organize the new information they will be
learning into the information they have just learned in the last lesson in the unit. In the last lesson, they
learned about creating music for film. We start off by summarizing the story and creating music for this,
much like a film would do. We then look at quotes from the play and talk about what they offer that a
chronological summary does not. Rather than just jumping to my new type of storytelling in music, I
give learners a chance to relate it to what they have already learned in the unit.
Wiggins also describes Piagets theory of social constructivism (p. 15). He notes that learners learn
from other experts. My lesson provides many opportunities for students to work in groups, teaching
their peers what they have discovered. There is no individual work other than the journal entries which
work to sum up what they have already learned from one another.
Wiggins describes Vygotskys concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) on page 17. A
learners ZPD is the area in which information is not easily comprehended without teacher guidance and
not past a learners ability to understand even with teacher guidance (usually due to developmental
limitations such as the inability to conserve a number or quantity). When learners are learning concepts
in their ZPD, they are able to understand things with teacher scaffolding and guidance. The activities I
designed for the students to interact with are mostly within their ZPD. For example, composing music for
the quotes from the text may be very challenging for some of the students. I will ask scaffolding questions
such as What kind of mood do you want to portray in your music? What should the tonality be to
support this? Do you think your music will be fast or slow? What instruments will you use to create the
kind of sound you want your music to have? Developing their musical themes will also be a challenging
task. Again, I will ask scaffolding questions such as What will we need to change in order to make the
themes work together? Does this support the overall mood we want this section to have? This activity
could produce a multitude of varying results, meaning that learners will be working in their own ZPD to
produce results according to their mental abilities. This differs from an activity that produces one desired
result in that only some students will be working in their ZPD to complete a specific task.
Wiggins suggest the term dimensions to replace elements of music in chapter three (pp. 36-37).
This is the basis of what students will be exploring in my lesson. They will be figuring out how to
represent literary themes and characters in music and will use altering the dimensions of music as their
tools. Students will come into the lesson with a basic knowledge of many of the dimensions of music
from activities we have done previously in class. They will be furthering their knowledge of these by
exploring how to use them in their compositions.
Wiggins described the idea of concept to label on page 42. In my individual lesson, I always let
learners discover the concept before giving them the label. This is evident in the way they learn about
development. This is also evident in teaching them what a tone poem is. We first look at a type of poem
they already know, a literary one, by analyzing what it offers readers and how music might sound like to
offer listeners the same things. Students then easily understand the label tone poem.
In chapter 4, Wiggins talks about monitoring student progress (pp. 55-56). Wiggins says that
teachers should constantly be providing opportunities for student input in an effort assess the nature and
depth of their understanding (p. 55). This plays a part in my lesson through the discussion. After
students discover a concept, we discuss it. Then, the students write a journal entry about it. These
discussions, along with the journal entries, are usefully for the learners to reflect on their learning and
also for the teacher to monitor student progress and decide what concepts need to be reinforced. They
are also useful for providing administrators with data about student progress.
In chapter 5, Wiggins talks about designing musical problems, describing good musical problems
as requiring learners to use the same thought processes and procedures that real musicians use when
they solve musical problems (p. 68). In my lesson, students take part in improvising music to accompany
an action, composing music to describe a literary theme, and developing themes to describe bigger literary
themes. These are things that professional composers might do in order to produce music. These are
real-life musical problems that people actually solve in the music industry.

Tobias (Forthcoming)
This article talks how TPACK (p. 12-13), teaching using their technological, pedagogical, and
content knowledge can be used to inform teaching decisions. In my unit, I did not use technology. At
first, I was going to use it for students to compose their music for the quotes from Romeo and Juliet;
however, in order for students to change and develop their themes, they would need to perform them live
in order to be able to manipulate them easily. I definitley think there is a fusion of pedagogical and
content knowledge evident in my project, however. My content knowledge allowed me to decide what
students would need to be able to do in order to create music to represent literary themes. It allowed me
to be able to analyze the music. My pedagogical knowledge allowed me to decide how I would help
students discover the things they would need to do to create this type of music. It allowed me to guide
students analysis of music. Neither of these two things would have created a successful lesson without the
other. Teachers need all of these types of knowledge to create a successful class.

Exploring Teaching and Learning, Campbell, Thompson, Barrett
Schwabs Commonplaces (p. 21): In our project, we focused a lot on using music and topics that
would be relevant to students. We chose a song that describes the story of Orpheus for the opening
lesson, a story from Greek mythology that students often study freshman year. For my part of the lesson, I
chose music for Romeo and Juliet, a play students also study freshman year. Therefore, all students would
be familiar with the other art form working with music in the unit. We also made accomodations for
special types of learners, such as Mark R. and Sean E. I also made accomodations for ELLs in my part of
the lesson. For example, we are taking some extra time to define words that may be unfamiliar to make
the content comprehensible for all students. In my lesson, I thought a lot about how students would be
interacting with the music and how they would actually be engaged with the activities. For example, they
do the following things during my lesson: summarize a story, act out events, improvise sounds, analyze
quotes, compose music for literary themes and characters, perform and watch peers perform, develop
musical themes, move to music, discuss music, write about music. This is a wide variety of activities they
are participating in within the course of no more than two weeks. All of these things are putting the
learners first and directly considering their specific need.
Dewey (p. 124): According to Dewey, educational experiences should always be democratic in
nature. As I imagine what my lesson would actually look like in a classroom, I would hardly ever be
standing at the front of the room teaching students. Primarily, students would be working in groups
and presenting for the class. He also suggests that learning should be continuous, building on prior
knowledge. Our entire unit has excellent continuity, as learners explore various different ways of telling a
story through music, discovering different ways of doing this along the way. My part of the lesson is very
interdisciplinary and ties to English, providing a way for them to transfer the knowledge learned in
English class to another subject. It also allows for them to transfer the new knowledge learned in
Campbell, Thompson, Barrett: Our project has generativity because it gets students thinking about
how to tell a story with music. We help students explore a few different ways of doing this, but there are
thousands more that we do not explore. It would prompt students to start thinking about other ways of
telling a story through music. It also helps students think about interdisciplinary relationships, like
representing literature through music. This would prompt students to think of other interdisciplinary
relationships like telling a story through dance ore how history plays a role in literature. It leaves them
with more questions than answers and gives them a desire to explore on their own. Our project also has
vibrancy because of the type of music we have used and the ways students will be engaging with the
music. For example, I chose a tone poem about a story students know and probably like, Romeo and Juliet
rather than choosing one like Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun which would probably not have been very
interesting to students. Students get to be funny through the actions they create to accompany their
summaries and play an active role while watching other groups perform by improvising sounds. The
article states that learning experiences where learners identities as musical individuals are addressed and
cultivated (p. 127). By letting them improvise their own sounds, their own musical identities are
cultivated. By allowing them to be silly and goof off in a productive way, their learning identities are
cultivated. Instead of just listening to a piece of music, they will be up moving around to the music. I
made sure that the video I showed incorporated humor and would draw the students attention.

A Kaleidoscope View of the Harlem Renaissance, Jenkins
I dont think I need to describe the huge interdisciplinary aspects of my part of the project since it
relies so heavily on English content. As the author of this article set up a project where students were
learning musical content based on historical content, I set up my project where students were learning
musical content based on literary content. This would make my lesson especially appealing to
administrators who will be excited that I am reinforcing English concepts (that students will be tested on)
in music class.

Toward Convergence, Tobias
Our project would spark students interest in interacting with music in many of the ways described
in the article. Since students are learning about different ways of telling a story through music and how
music influences a listeners idea of the text, students would probably be inspired to do things like
remediate a film trailer to change or support its meaning. In my part of the project, they will juxtapose
and develop themes, perhaps sparking their interest in creating a mash-up of two songs. These types of
things could be used as project extensions for my part of the project.

Deep Listening to the Musical World, Campbell
In my specific lesson, students engage with listening to music several times. Some of the time, they
might not even be aware that they are really listening to music. For example, after students present their
music for the quotes from Romeo and Juliet, they will perform these for peers and then decide how to
develop these themes as a class. Students will have to listen attentively to understand the musical themes
and the dimensions of music that make them what they are. They will then engage with the listening,
changing aspects of the themes to develop them. Students will see this more as creating than listening,
which is part of what makes the project interesting and engaging. Even when they are developing their
listening skills, they are very actively involved. Students also practice listening at the end of the project
when they listen to Tchaikovskys Romeo and Juliet. The article describes attentive listening as the teacher
guiding students with questions (p. 31), which I will be doing during this activity. The article describes
engaged listening as students actively participating in the music (p. 31). Students do this by moving to
different dimensions they hear. No enactive listening is described in my lesson plan, but students would
definitely do this after they have composed music for the quotes and are getting ready to perform it. They
will be listening for things they could do better or things they want to change.

Talking About Music: Better Questions? Better Discussions!, Allsup and Baxter
This article suggests questions teachers can use to scaffold students listening to and describing of
music. My lesson incorporates multiple opportunities for students to discuss music. It suggests six types
of questions teachers can ask (p. 30). I dont really like to think about questions in categories like this. I
take more of an approach of thinking about my objective and asking the questions that students need at
the moment to understand that objective. Because all students are different, it is hard to plan out what
types of questions you can use because you never know what theyre going to say. I do like the articles
flow from broad open-ended questions to more guided questions to get students to think generally about
the music and then more specifically. I do this in my lesson in the last listening activity. First, I ask the
students to move in any way that describes the music. Then, I ask them to move to fit a specific
dimension of music. I then ask questions like Why are you moving in that way? How does that show the
melodic contour/tempo/dynamics, etc.? These are guided questions. Later, when the students listen to
the development of the themes, I ask judicial questions like Why did the composer use that type of music
to show that literary theme? Why did he change the tonality of this theme for this part? Of course, these
are partly analytical questions, as the students will have to do some analysis to form a proper judgement.
No creative questions are used during this part of the lesson, but these questions are used in the part of
the lesson where students develop their own themes. I will ask questions like How should we change
these two themes to put them together? What will we need to do if we want to play them at the same
time? How would we change one to play it in the style of the other one? The journal entries offer
students an opporuntunity to organize their thoughts onto paper and think more critically about these
types of questions after each discussion.