Module 4 Analysis CI5353
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Research-Based Strategies for Enhancing Music Rhythmic Literacy
Jennifer Kaprielian
Curriculum and Instruction, American College of Education
CI5353: Standards-Driven Learning
Professor Deborah Gilbert, Ed.D
December 10
th
, 2023
Introduction
The majority of American public school music programs have seen a significant decline
in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and its resultant school closures (Stefaniak, 2023;
Laguarda, 2023)
. While many schools moved to some level of in-person teaching in the fall of
2021, some districts, including mine, completely shut down their performing music ensembles
for the following school year due to fears about the role singing or playing an instrument may
have in spreading the disease. The middle school in my district not only banned singing and
instrumental playing but completely replaced those classes with general music survey courses.
This meant the teachers could not even attempt to work around restrictions to provide students
with band or choir curricula for more than a year. This same school shut down the choir program
for an additional year.
To say the effects of this have been staggering is an understatement. The high school I
teach at only has about 250 students, and the small numbers I saw in my ensembles during the
pandemic have only worsened since that time. In 2021, the high school choir had three students.
In 2022 this increased to four, and in 2023, we currently have six students in choir, none of
whom are freshmen. The band has finally risen from 13 to 25 students this year, but across the
board, rhythmic literacy and musicianship are much lower than they were in prior years as
demonstrated by low achievement in pre-assessments at the start of the school year. As some
ensembles start to build in size again, a larger problem is now reaching the high school—the
decline of music literacy. Students are struggling to play, sing, and retain musical material that is
well below the accepted high school rating level (
Delzell & Doerksen, 1998.
) One fundamental
problem at the core of this is a lack of experience with reading more complex rhythmic patterns.
In this analysis, I will consider two strategies aimed at improving the rhythmic capabilities of my
high school students. These strategies come from music programs with high levels of success and
directors who gladly share their methodologies.
For this analysis, I looked at two secondary-level schools, Wando High School in
Charleston, South Carolina, and Stiles Middle School in Leander, Texas. Both schools are known
for their extremely high-performing music departments, and both schools have directors who,
through the use of published curricula or popular podcasts have communicated quite a lot about
their strategies for approaching rhythmic literacy (BDTS, 2017; Vogt Williams, 2016). The data
supporting their methods includes their successes in state and national-level adjudications and
competitions across the spectrum of concert, choir, and marching arts performance. Wando High
School boasts four Bands of America (BOA) Regional Championships, five BOA Grand
Nationals Finals, and 15 South Carolina 5-A State Championships (CCSD, 2019). Several prior
directors--Scott Rush, Jeff Scott, and Matthew Arau-- are now industry names in the world of
instrumental band curriculum with a published series called
Habits of Success
.
Stiles Middle School is well-known to many instrumental music educators following the
launch of a popular podcast called
After Sectionals
hosted by the three band directors at the
school. The Stiles Middle School honors band was selected to perform at the Mid-West clinic in
2019, which is an incredible honor and an extremely competitive process. Additionally, their
directors were asked to present a clinic on teaching rhythm at this same conference.
After
Sectionals
garnered such intense interest in the band world that the head director, Darcy Vogt
Williams, has since published several books about her strategies, including the specific and
purposeful way she teaches rhythmic literacy.
The first strategy I am utilizing is from Wando High School and is now part of the
Habits
publications, written by the Wando directors. The strategy has three major points: daily exposure
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to rhythm, in an
intentional
progression, with correlated melodic examples. In the third section
of their
Habits
textbooks, there are over 70 rhythm examples that meet these objectives. The
progression of rhythms builds from the simple to the complex, and the progression of skills is
carefully scaffolded. The aspect of this that I had never seen before was the attachment of a small
melody line that uses the rhythm students have just read and adds notes. This strategy tackles
rhythmic literacy from multiple angles and then takes it beyond just rhythm to provide an
additional level of challenge. The second strategy is one used by Darcy Vogt Williams with her
beginner but can be easily adapted for any age group. I will refer to this as the Five Step Rhythm
strategy. The first step requires students to count the rhythm out loud and the second step has
students then “sizzle” the rhythm, meaning they blow air and make a “tss” sound similar to how
they would blow air through their instrument. The third step has students sing the rhythm with
the correct note names, and the fourth has them do this while also fingering the notes. The fifth
and last step has them play the example. The key to this strategy is to use it consistently, for
everything students play.
Implementing the Five Step Rhythm s
trategy will achieve several beneficial objectives.
By having students drill the rhythms five times, they are getting that incredibly important piece
needed to master any skill--
practice (ACE, 2021). By
adding new elements each time, student
interest is maintained, and other elements such as breathing technique, note reading, and finger
position are incorporated and practiced as well. Additionally, doing this consistently in rehearsal
provides a model for students who wish to try something new at home in their independent
practice time. Studies show that the majority of students do not know how to correctly practice
music when they are at home and need significant modeling and instruction on this from their
teacher (Hallam, 2002). Incorporating daily rhythmic sight reading followed immediately by a
coordinating melodic example that utilizes the new rhythm pattern will most likely provide
students with multiple ways to access a new rhythm. Besides counting it, they will also hear it in
action. Having the new rhythm become part of the daily warm-up routine will get them in the
habit of engaging those skills regularly, again providing that critical need for practice.
The first strategy of breaking rhythms down into the Five Step Rhythm strategy
will take
some effort from the teacher to restructure rehearsals and class time. Adding extra steps to
learning new music takes up rehearsal time, which can be difficult for a director to do initially,
but has a huge payoff. The adage ‘slow down to speed up’ comes into play here. It may be that
curricular goals need to be adjusted for a longer timetable. However, this will cost no money and
only some effort. This strategy will take energy as the teacher needs to remember to break every
new piece of music into these five steps. It can take some time to break habits and may be
difficult in the beginning. Implementing the Wando High School rhythm sight reading examples
could cost the teacher considerable time and energy if they were to do it on their own.
Fortunately, the Wando High School director has published the set of rhythms they use in a book
that is for sale in most major publication sites (BDTS, 2017). Implementing this strategy will
cost money, and the music director will need to reallocate some of the budget toward these
supplies. If every student is to be provided a book, that will come up to several hundred dollars.
However, once the school district owns the books, only a little money needs to be spent each
year to maintain the curriculum. Having the materials means the teacher will not have to spend
any energy or time writing out their examples themselves.
I have significant control over the implementation of both strategies, with a possible lack
of control over the budget I will be provided with for the upcoming school year. Funding is never
guaranteed; however, I am historically given enough money to purchase some supplies, and
believe this will not be an issue next year. While I believe I have significant control over the
success of students, there are always those factors that cannot be accounted for. For example, a
student may experience a death in the family and may not be emotionally present during class
time. A student may get sick and miss significant amounts of class time. These are examples of
factors outside of the teacher’s control. There may also be diverse learners who truly struggle
with rhythmic sight reading and need far more support than I can provide during class
time.
While daunting, I have total control over how I choose to spend my instructional time, and
this can be powerful if employed correctly.
To implement the Five-Step Rhythm
strategy, I would first have to sit down and look at
my curricular timeline for the entire year. I would first review my regular curricular goals and
determine which goals may have to be put to the side or removed altogether to build in daily time
for a rhythm focus. I would also need to break down the macro view of my year's goals into
smaller pieces to determine weekly and daily objectives. Finally, I would look at each
performance and reconsider what musical repertoire I select and how it would supplement and
reinforce the rhythms I want students to learn. For example, pieces composed by Randall
Standridge typically provide fun and challenging rhythms. The music selected then becomes the
daily curriculum and supports the instructional goals.
To implement the Wando High School rhythmic sight-reading program, I would need to
ensure I budgeted for the
Habits of Success
student books this December, and would then have to
wait for the town to approve the budget in March. The district would hopefully order the supplies
in the summer and I would review them in August. While many of these concepts may be
theoretical, targeting rhythmic literacy is something I am working on this year, and these two
strategies are ones I am very actively pursuing as part of my student learning objectives this year.
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I have already purchased one of each of the
Habits for Success
books containing these rhythmic
sight-reading examples and am now starting to pilot them in some of my classes. The middle
school is also piloting the Habits series book aimed at younger musicians. Depending on how
successful we are, we fully intend to push for the district to purchase a full set of books along
with the full teacher guides.
By next September, the macro and micro planning guides for all ensemble lessons need to
be adjusted to fit in time for rhythmic sight reading. In addition to physical changes and material
supports, there needs to be a philosophical shift in my approach to my rehearsals. If I truly want
students to prioritize rhythmic literacy, then I need to make daily access to rhythmic sight
reading a priority, even at the cost of other competing priorities. There are many different reasons
why a director might be tempted to cancel the daily warm-up routine and simply jump into the
music. There are demands for various performances that cause stress and a drive to use every
precious minute to master the repertoire. Looking at my practices last year, this happened
frequently. The drive to get the concert ready, or the Veteran’s Day assembly music, or the
Memorial Day parade music, was frequently a higher priority. However, to achieve the long-term
goal of improving students' musicianship, this cannot be the case any longer, and students must
be guaranteed a daily rhythm sight reading example.
Conclusion
To improve student achievement in secondary music, and ensembles, long-term planning
must be successfully implemented. Weekly objectives and daily lesson learning targets must be
informed by macro-level curricular goals, which in turn receive guidance from the Core National
Arts standards for music education (NCAS, 2023). At Stiles Middle School in Wando High
School, teachers have found incredible success by providing students with an extremely
intentional focus on rhythmic literacy. Using both the four-step process to break down new
rhythms found at styles, Middle School, and the daily exposure to rhythms that follow a well-
scaffolded program. Implementing these strategies will ensure student success with current and
more complex rhythm patterns and will provide a long-lasting return on investment for the entire
music program's capabilities.
References
American College of Education (2021) CI5353: Standards-Driven Learning: Module 4.
[Practice]. Canvas.
https://ace.instructure.com/courses/1972957/external_tools/118428
.
Charleston County School District (2019). Wando High School marching band makes history
and breaks records.
Ccsdschools.
https://www.ccsdschools.com/site/default.aspx?
PageType=3&DomainID=4&ModuleInstanceID=488&ViewID=6446EE88-D30C-497E-
9316-3F8874B3E108&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=12473&PageID=1
.
Delzell, J. K., & Doerksen, P. F. (1998). Reconsidering the Grade Level for Beginning
Instrumental Music.
Update: Applications of Research in Music Education
,
16(2),
17-22.
https://doi.org/10.1177/875512339801600205
.
Band Directors Talk Shop (2017). Habits of a significant band director.
https://banddirectorstalkshop.com/habits-significant-band-director/
.
Hallam, S. (2002). Musical motivation: Towards a model synthesizing the research.
Music
Education Research, 4(2)
, 225–244.
Laguarda, I. (June 2023). COVID 'gutted' Stamford schools' music program. Can a 'visionary'
effort by teachers revive it?
Stamford Advocate.
https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/covid-stamford-schools-music-program-
teachers-18130687.php
.
National Coalition for Arts Standards (2023). National core arts standards: Standards at a glance.
https://www.nationalartsstandards.org/
.
Stefaniak, C. (2023). Effects of COVID-19 on elementary and secondary music education.
Belmont University.
https://repository.belmont.edu/music_theses/11
.
Vogt Williams, D. (Host). (2016–present). After sectionals [Audio podcast].
Kaleidoscope
Adventures.
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