of Troy,

Good to have you on board on this subject. Today in class I told my fourth graders in a recorder class that they would be tested on identifying three notes that they've been playing for four lessons in beginning recorder: b, a, and g on the treble staff.

I reviewed the mnemonic device we use for the lines: Elvis's guitar broke down Friday (e, g, b, d, f) and FACE for the spaces.

I took them through the concept attainment model we'd used for identifying the difference between the appearance of line and space notes.

I finally showed them the three notes we had played in their first four lessons, b, a, and g. I repeated that their test would be a piece they had never seen with 50 notes, all covering b, a, and g in various note values.

Then I asked the question, "Are any of you completely confused? Please don't be embarrassed because this is the time to speak up so I can help you."

One hand slowly went up, then two more, and finally a fourth. I invited those four children up to the white board. The rest of the children talked in the background while I took the four through a couple of drills. It became immediately evident that these children had completely missed the boat on the concept attainment model and had no idea how to recognize the difference between line and space notes. I reworked the explanation of what I had presented in the model, used new language, new metaphors. The light bulbs began to come on, one child at a time. We went through some more drills, and one by one the smiles began to break out on these children's faces. Understanding had been reached. This took about ten minutes from the class's 45 minutes in their weekly lesson, but well worth it.

What is interesting to note about teaching elementary music is I can easily teach children to play by ear with kinetic references. The hard part is for them to make the connection between what they can easily pick up in ear/touch instruction and what they read on the score. But our Virginia Standards of Learning for Music do not stress ear training to the degree of training in reading notation. Both are equally important, I think.

What happened today is an example of working backwards with students to see which concepts have fallen through the cracks. It's a very low level of musical knowledge, but we will not progress to the children's composing original recorder melodies in the spring if I'm not rigorous in working up Bloom's ladder, checking and evaluating all students' understanding.

I especially enjoy showing even these early beginners tricks of the trade: wild fast trills, quick runs up and down the recorder, and quick repetitive rhythm patterns. We get these without much reference to written notation. That will be in place when they write their own compositions in composition groups. My goal in letting my students practice the tricks is to keep their interest high while we work through the challenging task of learning to read the notation. I've observed that tasks that were immediately easy for me as a child are not easy for all children. We each bring different gifts into class, and I feel driven to respect the differences. ( I am the poorest person on the court when it comes to athletic ability, but I sure can reach my athletes by approching music from its physical challenges. "Ten points to anyone in here who can ever play this passage faster than I can!" Boy, does that ever send my physical kids home ready to practice and pulverize their old music teacher at the next lesson or future lessons.)

This has probably been written to an audience of one (myself), but it was fun remembering today's ten minutes of witnessing eureka! points.

Best regards,
Woodwind