Listening and Not Only Hearing

As a music educator of younger students, it is important to me that students are listening to our musical selections and not just hearing them. I want them to actually listen for key concepts and melodies as I ask them too. However, I often struggle with knowing if the students actually understand what I am asking them to listen to.

According to Bauer (2014) in Music Learning Today: Digital Pedagogy for Creating, Performing, and Responding to Music, there are two types of listening, intuitive and formal. Intuitive listening is “a natural process whereby the individual listener has control over all aspects of the listening experience” (pg. 121). Formal listening, on the other hand, is “usually very teacher-centered and analytical, often focus[ed] on musical elements, formal structures, and other facts related to the music” (pg. 121). I know my students spend a lot of time intuitively listening to music inside and outside of school. For example, the gym teachers use popular music as a timer for the students during activities, and the general education teachers use music as brain breaks and rewards. Finally, I cannot count how many times I have heard, “Now watch me whip, now watch me nay nay” in the hallways. I love knowing my students are listening to and enjoying music, but when they come to music I want them to listen not just for words or dance moves, but to listen.

To do this, I often have students move to the music selections. For example, we are studying music genres this year, and we are starting off with marches. Today, we learned about John Philip Sousa and marched to the steady beat of The Stars and Stripes Forever. Considering my students are only 5-8, we spend most of our time keeping a steady beat to the music, however, we also spend time on mood where we will move to the flowing sounds of the ocean or Symphony No. 40 in G Minor.

In order to incorporate more technology, I would like to use my Zaption project or a SmartBoard listening map with the students. I made a video of John Philip Sousa’s The Liberty Bell using a YouTube video of the Marine Band. In the video, the students will listen to the piece, analyze the music as piano or forte, learn about the conductor and the Liberty Bell, and pretend to play in the band. My Zaption video can be viewed below.

I am considering doing a SmartBoard listening map with Hungarian Dance #3 by Brahms. Around Halloween, the students and I will listen to the piece and develop a story about a group of trick-or-treaters and then encounter something dark and mysterious based on the mood of the music. To accompany our story telling, I would like to incorporate a listening map via the SmartBoard. I am thinking we could organize with shapes to represent each section of the story, and then, write the story inside the shapes as it progresses. This would be a lesson on or introduction to forms, because we could then change the shapes into letters. I think a listening map and story telling in this manner would keep the students much more involved and actively listening.

References:

Bauer, W. I. (2014). Music Learning Today: Digital Pedagogy for Creating, Performing, and Responding to Music. New York: Oxford University Press.