Overview:
Hearing is passive, but listening is active. Listening requires a higher level of engagement and results in greater knowledge if students are actively engaged in thinking about what they hear. Essentially, listening with a purpose. Students need multiple hearings in order to grasp a concept or to make an informed observation because music is “in the moment”. The practice of listening will cultivate transferable skills for how to listen critically in other situations.
Objectives:
Students will be able to:
- Describe the rationale for including listening lessons in the elementary music class,
- Summarize the ways in which aural skills and repertoire are developed through listening,
- Identify how listening lessons can reinforce music concepts,
- Illustrate the ways in which listening activities can help to formulate students’ thoughts and opinions about different music genres,
- Describe the guidelines for teaching a listening lessons,
- Design and demonstrate the sequence for teaching a listening lesson,
- Describe how listening activities can be assessed effectively, and
- Identify ways in which technology can enhance a listening lesson.
Module Summary
Quality experiences in listening have the ability to foster student creativity, perceptions about music, and reinforce music concepts. The focus on listening in the elementary classroom presents the opportunity to extend and broaden students’ repertoire, expose students to a variety of musical styles and genres, and develop an aural repertoire.
Information in this module provided guidelines for developing student’s listening skills and effectives ways in which to refine students’ aural perceptions. Important strategies included using age- appropriate selections that immediately engage the listening, asking students to listen for specific qualities in the selection, multiple listening opportunities, and short segments used to highlight different concepts such as form or expression.
As teachers, we want our students to listen closely and with discrimination. Well-planned listening experiences using directed questions or specific responses help students begin to make distinctions between types of music and to formulate deeper listening skills.