Fall 2021
Friday, August 27th, 2021

• Opening Session: Students' Musical Success (from Day 1 to Graduation & Beyond)
  • This session provided a rationale for sound-before-sight-before-theory practices in school music education through a comparison of language and music acquisition. 
    • ​Presentation slides (PDF)
    • Blobs Resource
      • We used this activity as an opportunity to discuss the various ways that people listen, how brains "chunk" musical information, and an expanded understanding of "audiation."
        • Note: Before Adobe Flash Player was retired at the start of 2021, there was a second Blobs activity in which you placed the blobs on columns from lowest to highest. (At the conclusion of each round, the blobs would turn into whole notes on a musical staff...such a great pre-reading moment.) More importantly, this activity had the option of using blobs or "piano notes," which were clear pitches--none of the tiny inconsistencies some of us hear in the blobs. I've written the owners and creators of the site in the hopes that they'll recreate this activity in the post-Flash era! I'll let you know if it becomes available.
• Morning & Afternoon Sessions: Lifelong Rhythm Systems
  • ​This session explored the characteristics of "good" (pedagogically strong) rhythm systems, compared beat-oriented rhythm systems and metric-oriented rhythm systems, and demonstrated beginning concepts in Music Learning Theory (processes that support the development of audiation). In my demonstration, I modeled the use of Takadimi (beat-oriented) in rhythmic pattern instruction informed by Music Learning Theory learning sequences ("neutral-neutral, syllable-syllable, neutral-syllable").
    • ​​Presentation slides (PDF)
    • Takadimi: A Beat-Oriented System of Rhythm Pedagogy (Hoffman, Pelto, & White, 1996)
      • This is the original article, published in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, that introduced the Takadimi rhythm system. This may be of particular interest for those of you who had questions about Takadimi and more advanced rhythms.
    • Takadimi: A Rhythm System for All Ages (Ester, Scheib, & Inks, 2006)
      • This article from the Music Educators Journal was published 10 years after the introduction of Takadimi as a rhyth system, when it had made its way into some school music programs. It's a shorter and (in my opinion) more accessible version for practitioners that explains much of what is presented in the 1996 article.

Spring 2022
Elementary General Music Curricular Planning Draft (viewable only by WPS employees)

May Summary Letter/Points
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