Alix Latta

MUSE 258

Citation
Sound Connections Chapter 9
Don Ester
4/8/2019

Discussion
As the last chapter of the Sound Connections book, this chapter fittingly deals
with assessment of all of the skills taught within the book during any sort of teaching experience.
This covers quite a few things related to assessment of music students under the Sound
Connections approach, including but not limited to the reasons behind assessment, daily and
cumulative assessment, testing, and end-of-course grades.
This chapter is especially important to any current or future music educator
looking to follow the Sound Connections approach because assessment is not only how a teacher
determines how well their students are doing in the class, but how they determine how well they
are doing as a teacher. If there are a multitude of students within the class who are not
understanding the material, the teacher should understand that that most likely reflects on how
well they taught the material to the students, and should prompt them to reassess their own
teaching techniques. In order to get the best feedback for themselves possible, this means that
teachers should understand the most objective and accurate ways of assessment in order to make
sure that they are able to judge from the most unbiased position possible how well both they and
their students are doing with the concepts. Sound Connections provides a variety of ways to
assess music students on their skills and knowledge within the realm of music literacy, and any
music educator looking to best understand their own capacity as a teacher would certainly benefit
from these.