Overview:
Teachers should incorporate movement into their lessons to a enhance students’ musical understanding. Research indicates that students participating in large-motor movement and rhythmic training outperform students not receiving these experiences. Movement, kinesthetic and eurhythmic activities increase melodic-discrimination abilities and help to make abstract music concepts more concrete for students of all ages.
Objectives:
Students will be able to:
- Describe the process used to teach movement activities,
- Identify effective age-appropriate introductory movement activities,
- Delineate how movement activities can be used to teach music concepts,
- Describe the ways in which create expression is achievable through movement,
- Compare and contrast different types of movement activities,
- Describe the best practices for leading movement activities including action songs and formal dance,
- Demonstrate effective methods for leading movement activities,
- Identify and describe how movement activities are assessed.
How are Movement Activities Assessed?
To begin the assessment of movement activities, the music teacher must decide the importance of the activity in the total music program: whether the experience is merely a complementary by-product of the instruction or whether it is part of the instructional process constructed to meet curricular goals. If movement activities are intended as instructional tools, they will be activities that can be assessed.
The teacher can ask the following questions to assess movement:
- Movement to teach concepts – Does the student depict the musical concept (pulse, meter, melodic contour, etc.) in the movement?
- Action songs and singing games – Does the student perform the gestures and/or steps in the appropriate rhythm? Is the student “out of step” with the song, the game, the other students?
- Creative movement – Does the student move in a natural way, with thought given to the use of space and time? Has the student developed his personal movement, or is he merely following the example of other students?
- Dance – Does the student follow the proper sequence of movements of the dance? Is the student performing in the proper rhythm and style of the dance?
Assessments can take the form of check sheets or Likert rating scales based on established expectations and rubrics. The teacher might also ask the students to participate in group discussions or to write short journal entries for performance evaluation.