Overview:
Listening to music is an integral part of music instruction. To provide students with an optimum and enriching experience, the selection of quality music for listening lessons and activities is important. In addition, the examples of music can and should be drawn from diverse style periods, genres, and cultures to expose students to a wide variety of music readily available.
Objectives:
Students will be able to:
- Identify and model best practices for teaching a listening lesson.
- Examine best practices developing listening skills in young students.
- Identify ways in which music can be taught through a guided listening lesson.
- Identify age-appropriate music for younger students.
- Evaluate and analyze music literature to be used for listening lessons based on standards identified in the text.
- Identify ways in which technology can be used as a tool for guiding creative listening lessons.
Fostering of Student Creativity
Listening activities provide a natural opportunity to foster student creativity. During or after a listening activity, students working in groups or individually can answer questions, move to music, create art, or write literary responses. These activities address the different types of learning and expression-kinesthetic, visual, and verbal. The creative kinesthetic expression might include making up movement to depict musical structure or characterizing or illustrating the music. Possible visual creative activities are inventing graphic notation, creating listening maps, associating colors with music, and painting and drawing pictures. To explore creative verbal or vocal expression, the student might be asked to discuss aspects of the music, associate words with the music, or write stories or poems that the music invokes.
Development of Aural Skills and Repertoire
In the earliest grades, students should learn to become aware of sounds and focus on aural stimuli. This skill should precede the expectation that students can recognize specific qualities in listening selections. These early experiences prepare the students to be able to recognize larger works, to respond to longer selections, and to develop an aural repertoire.
Multiple listening opportunities establish a selection in the students' aural repertoire. An approach to repertoire building is to utilize a different active creative experience, such as those listed in the previous section, with each hearing of the selection. Another approach to multiple hearings is to allow the children to hear the entire piece first. Additional hearings then focus on smaller parts and a variety of conceptual emphases. For the final listening, the class will again hear the entire selection. The teacher may combine these two approaches.
Formation of Thoughts and Opinions about Music
- Learn the concepts of music so they might discuss and analyze music and musical events.
- Listen to music and reflect and respond to their feelings and perceptions.
- Discuss their attitudes and preferences in a non-judgmental environment.
- Listen to musical selections frequently so that the repertoire becomes familiar.
- Hear music that is not present in their daily environments.