Transcript Musical achievement

Christina Virgilio
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Background
 Introductory choir for females
 Allows everyone to learn the same
fundamentals
 Separation by gender to help guys and
advance girls
 Freshmen have experience learning by rote
 “quick fix”
 Cannot just learn songs, must learn
transferrable skills
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Music Literacy
 “Although students may not study music for a
career in music, they still should be given the tools
they need to continue pursuing music as a part of
their lives” (Kuehne, 2010, p. 13).
 If students can read music notation, they are able
to focus on the musical components of the
literature, instead of just the notes and rhythms
 Music is what is not the notes
 Challenging for vocalists (pitch matching)
 Get better at sight-singing by doing it
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Current Practice
 Sight-singing
 part of daily rehearsal routine
 after vocal warm-ups
 use a method book, modify as needed
 large-group instruction and individual
assessment
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Assessment
 Group’s success is not always an accurate
indicator of individual achievement
 Assessment: individual, frequent, organized
 Students and teacher can recognize progress
or challenges throughout learning process
 Teacher can offer feedback and strategies to
help
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Differentiated instruction
 Assessments and teaching strategies should provide
appropriate challenges
 “fit the students rather than requiring that students
adapt to fit the curriculum”
 Theory of Multiple Intelligences- give options so
students can acquire and process information based
on the way they understand
 Students acknowledge preferred learning mode
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Purpose of Study
 The purpose of this study is to compare freshmen
female high school choir students’ sight-singing
achievement when using and not using self-selected
practice techniques.
 More study is needed to determine the effects of
student choice in learning sight-singing.
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Research Questions
 Is there a significant difference in sight-singing achievement
between singers who use self-selected practice techniques
and singers who do not use self-selected practice techniques?
 What is the measurable difference in sight-singing
achievement from the pre-test and post-test scores when
practice techniques are used and not used?
 What are the students’ perceptions of their selected practice
techniques?
 Is there a relationship between specific practice techniques
and students’ achievement level?
 Is there a relationship between students’ previous musical
experience and the technique that they selected?
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Definitions & Limitations
 Musical achievement - the measure of rhythm and
pitch accuracy scores as recorded by Smartmusic
 Groups will consist of female freshmen singers from
one high school.
 Results may not accurately represent male singers,
other grade levels, or other demographics.
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Plan and Materials
 Floyd and Bradley (2006): Surveyed 24 Kentucky HS
choir directors whose choirs received a “distinguished”
rating in sight-singing at state festival
 80% of the directors taught sight-singing for the entire
school year and 83% taught it at the beginning of the
rehearsal as part of their daily routine
 Students need to sight-sing on a regular basis in order
to improve (Demorest, 1998)
 50% of the high school teachers used a combination of
self-composed exercises along with a method book
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System
 May’s (1993) study found that moveable-do was used
by 82% of the responding teachers
 Demorest and May (1995) sought to determine if the
sight-singing system influenced students’ scores
 Students using the moveable-do system scored
significantly higher
 students that used moveable-do received more
consistent training (K-12) than the students using fixeddo
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Group-Instruction
 Henry and Demorest (1994) sought to determine
whether group success indicated individual
achievement
 High-achieving choirs received an individual average
of 66% in pitch and rhythm accuracy
 Group achievement was not a highly accurate gauge of
individual achievement in sight-singing
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Individual Assessment
 Demorest (1998): analyzed the student achievement of
students with a regular program of individual testing
and students with only group instruction
 Treatment group was individually tested once a week
along with regular group instruction
 Significantly greater gain for the treatment group on
the major melody, but not the minor melody
 The minor melody may have shown weaker results
because the teachers mainly focused on the major
melodies.
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Hand Signs
 McClung (2008) wanted to determine if HS choir
students achieved higher sight-singing scores with the
use of hand signs
 No significant differences in the scores when students
used or did not use hand signs
 Students’ preferences: general rise-and-fall gesture
(57%), specific hand sign gesture (23%), or no hand
signs (18%)
 Further research could determine relationships
between students' learning mode preferences and
sight-singing skills.
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Preparation Time
 Henry and Killian (2005): sought to determine if there
was a significant difference in sight-singing scores
when participants had thirty seconds to practice prior
to their performance
 Most successful strategies used during preparation
included tonicizing the key, using hand signs, keeping
the beat, and isolating problem areas
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External Influences
 Prior experience and training are advantages in
developing literacy skills, but it is often true that
"training attracts the talented" (Demorest 1998, pg. 9)
 Killian and Henry (2005): high-achieving students
typically had more music and sight-singing experience
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Participants
 Batavia High School:
 84.2% White, 9.2% Hispanic, 2.4% Black, 2.0% Asian
 10% low-income at BHS (49% in district)
 10.6% IEP
 Control Group: 45 freshmen female students in
Women’s Chorale (Fall 2013)
 Treatment Group: 40-50 freshmen female students in
Women’s Chorale (Fall 2014)
 Most participants were in middle school choir
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Research Instrument
 Smartmusic- interactive learning program
 Marks correct/incorrect pitches and rhythms
 Laptop and microphone
 Sing at First Sight
 4 weeks of introduction before pre-test
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Pre-Test and Post-Test
 8 measures, 66 bpm
 key of F major with 4/4 time signature
 step-wise and starts/ends on do
 60 seconds to review the exercise and then the
computer will tonicize the key (do-mi-sol-mi-do-sol,do), give the starting pitch, and click off four beats
before the downbeat
 Evaluation of pitch and rhythm accuracy (out of 100%)
 Score will be submitted with an audio file and a
screenshot
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Course Assessments
 13 weeks of regular assessments and in-class instruction
 Post-test is the same as pre-test
 3 practice methods for treatment group:
 tapping the beat
 using hand signs
 vocally tonicizing the key
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Survey for Treatment Group
 years of previous choir experience (in-school)
 years of previous choir experience (outside of school)
 years of piano experience
 years of instrumental experience
 Select preferred practice method and write a short-
answer response
 why they chose that particular method
 if they think it helped with their sight-singing
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Statistic Tests
 Analyzing pre-test and post-test scores and responses
to the survey questions
 Descriptive statistics (M, SD)
 one-way ANOVA independent sample analysis
 2 pre-test scores
 2 post-test scores
 one-way ANOVA correlated sample analysis:
relationship between the pre-test and the post-test
scores within each group
 ANCOVA test if pre-test scores are unequal to adjust
the post-test means based on the pre-test means
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