Music Education Commons^™

Using Song To Teach Sight Words, Taylor Hagood Guin

Graduate Research Showcase

This research is about how a group of seven kindergarten classes used a short and straightforward song to recognize the following six common kindergarten sight words: on, off, up, us, no, & go. As a current music educator and former middle grades English teacher, I wanted to create an opportunity to establish cross-curricular connections in my music classroom. For this specific experiment, seven different classes, including General Education, Self-Contained Special Education, and English Language Learning classes, were selected. They were taught these six sight word songs through the “Sight Word Song.” I selected the sight words specifically because the students …

Music, Our Human Superpower, Kristin Lems

Faculty Publications

Research about music pervades every discipline because music touches every area of life. Studies revealing the salutary effects of music can be found not only in music educator research, but in research in psychology, speech and hearing, child development, neuroscience, and increasingly, health and wellness, aging, rehabilitation and recovery. Since my focus is especially in the areas of language and literacy, I research the positive effects of music on reading, writing, and learning languages - and of this, there is no shortage. In this brief Academia article, I share what I’d like to call an “homage-with-references” to our great Superpower, …

Mued 397b/D: Practicum (Music Teaching Field Experience)—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio, Dale Bazan

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This course is taken during the spring semester of the junior year in the Bachelor of Music Education degree. The field experience places students inside schools weekday mornings over 5 weeks following Spring Break, and following core music education methods courses in instrumental and choral teaching (i.e., Instrumental Methods MUED 345 and Choral Methods MUED 346). The UNL undergraduate bulletin describes this course as simply, “Supervised teaching experiences in school.” Students are placed in school settings in the discipline opposite their applied instrument. Specifically, vocal applied students are placed in instrumental settings, and instrumental applied students are placed in vocal …

Mued 403: Student Teaching Seminar—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio, Dale Bazan

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This course is taken during music education undergraduate students' student teaching semester, which occurs after completion of all coursework in the Bachelor of Music Education degree. While students work full-time in elementary and secondary schools, they participate in on-campus seminars and workshops. These meetings include presentations and discussion sessions led by the instructor, area school district administrators, and UNL Career Services counselors. Sessions explore online and print resources for professional advancement in the field of music teaching. There are several assumptions made about college students, and more specifically undergraduate music education students. It is assumed, in general, that adolescents and …

Muop 356/856: Intermediate/Advanced Opera Techniques—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Jamie M. Reimer

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

I began the investigation of this course and subsequent course portfolio with the following objectives in mind:

1. To solidify and articulate the skills I intend students enrolled in this course to achieve by the end of the semester;
2. To think creatively about the presentation of course material to most effectively engage and empower students' success; and
3. To assess the effectiveness of the course activities in achieving course goals stated in the syllabus.

I am also excited to explore the options available for different methods of content delivery in this course, particularly the application of recorded performance for assessment. In the …

Reflections Of Pre-Service Teachers On Their Own Teaching Practices, David W. Snyder

Faculty Publications - Music

The focus of this paper is self-reflection on teaching using video. The excerpts that are used in this paper are taken from the emails of pre-service music teachers at Illinois State University completing their required clinical hours with instrumental students at both the middle school and high school level. Though these teaching episodes were eventually evaluated by the instructor in the areas of teacher presence, classroom management, lesson planning, teaching method, pacing, error detection, pedagogy and assessment, the pre-service teachers received no specific guidelines on how to focus their first reflective comments. The intent was to get a glimpse into …

Symphonic Band Conducting Practicum, Allison Schmidtke

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Most music education majors take a year-long sequence of conducting classes in their junior year, about two years before we student teach. Unfortunately, of necessity, these conducting classes are rather contrived. Over the period of each quarter, we conducted our ensemble of cooperative, musically mature peers through about five eight- measure exercises focusing on a specific skill. Of course, since actual technique is only one (small) aspect of work on a podium, we were also introduced to the process of score study with its multitude of layers such as consideration of harmonic structure, stylistic elements, orchestration, context (historical influences, information …