Hoy 1

Sarah Hoy
Dr Veblen
Music 3852
November 25, 2017

Chapter 8 and 9 Reflection Questions:

Chapter 8
1. Why are xylophones recommended for use by school-age children instead of by
kindergarten and preschool children?
A. Whereas school-aged children have developed their muscle coordination in order to
play the xylophone, kindergarten and preschool children have not.
2. What is a corpophone? How many corpophones can you demonstrate?
A. Corpophones are the bodys sound producers such as clapping, snapping, slapping,
stomping, etc.
3. How can classroom instruments be categorized, so that children can understand
similarities among instruments regarding their function and the materials from
which they are made?
A. Classroom instruments may be categorized by function into two group:
membranophones (instruments that produce sound through a vibrating skin or
membrane) and idiophones (instruments that produce sound by being struck, shaken,
scraped, or tapped).
Instruments may be categorized into instruments that are made of woods, skins,
metals, and gourds, to teach students the materials that instruments are made of.
4. What are childrens challenges for playing recorder? What direction can the
teacher provide to meet these challenges?
A. The challenges for children playing the recorder are as follows:"1) feeling the holes
that they cannot easily see 2) balancing the recorder with the thumbs at the back, the
fingers at the front, and the mouth at the tip 3) curving the fingers and placing the
fleshy finger pads on the appropriate holes and 4) blowing gently while forming the
sound doo with the mouth and tongue. - 227

5. How is an Autoharp tuned? A guitar?

A. A metal tuning key is provided for tightening the string to raise the pitch for
loosening it to lower the pitch. By pressing one chord button (for example, G major)
and then slowly brushing across each G, B, and D string from highest to lowest, flat
and sharp pitches can be heard and adjusted with the tuning key. 228
Tuning the guitar may be difficult for students as they have to match pitch -
regardless to tune the guitar one must pluck each string (EADGBe) and then turn the
tuning pegs for EAD to the left to raise the pitch or to the right to lower the pitch and
for strings GBe to the left to lower the pitch and to the right to raise the pitch.
6. Discuss the contributions of the piano in reinforcing childrens musical learning.
A. Playing the piano stimulates eurythmic movement to music, ie. Rhythmic motion in
sync with music. The piano illustrates musical features from pitch to duration and
dynamic intensity.
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Chapter 9
1. What is the difference between active perceptive listening and passive functional
listening? What are three techniques to enhance active listening?
A. The simple difference between active perceptive listening and passive functional
listening is that, active perceptive listening encourages students to form thoughts
about what they are listening to, while passive functional using music as background
noise.
Three ways the text suggests to enhance active listening are: 1. Introduce students to a
piece and then re-introduce it to them multiple times in order to establish its
familiarity in their long term memory. 2. Have conversations about the piece that
youve introduced them to in order to form opinions, observations, etc about the
piece. 3. Engage the students in listening activities that allow them to document and
reflect on what theyve heard.
2. At what age or stage are students likely to form strong preferences for particular
kinds of music? How might that influence what recordings you use with them?
A. Around the age of nine or ten students begin being more influenced by their peers. In
order to choose new music to introduce them to, a teacher can look at the
characteristics of the music that they tend to like (loud and fast music with a strong
beat thats often humorous).
3. What are useful steps for planning listening lessons designed to build repertoire?
A. The useful steps are as follows: 1) Prepare: give the students something specific to
listen for, 2) Listen: check in with student perceptions, 3) Listen again: encourage the
students to engage with the music by dancing, playing along, etc, 4) Questions and
Discussion: address the music, 5) Listen again, and 6) Extend the listening: use the
listening as inspiration to compose music or listen to music either like or in contrast
to what youve listened to.
4. What are the benefits to having children construct their own responses to listening
experiences?
A. These exercises focus on the students understanding rather than the having them
reiterate the lesson that they were meant to learn.
5. What are the different stages of deep-listening and what happens at each stage?
A. Deep listening exercises explore individual explorations and representations of music.
Deep listening occurs in three phases: Attentive listening: teacher encourages the
students to focus on the musical structures of the music, Engaged listening: students
are engaged with the music by tapping the beat, playing an ostinato, singing the
melody, etc, and Enactive listening: familiarizing the students with the music on a
deeper level by learning the piece in style and reflecting on the nuances of the work.
6. What techniques can be used to assess listening?
A. One technique that can be used to assess listening is the What do you hear? chart.
These allow teachers to assess whether students have been able to understand the
overall concept of the exercise and/or smaller elements of the exercise. Questions that
could be asked are: What were you thinking when you listened to the music?, If you
were going to make music like this, how would you start?, How does this music make
you feel?, What in the music makes you feel this way?. This form of assessment is a
great material resource to accumulate throughout the stages of musical learning to
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have physical evidence to show the students how much theyve learned and further, to
show parents as well.
7. How can teachers nurture their own ongoing growth as perceptive listeners?
A. Teachers need to continue to build their repertoire of music in order to have new
resources to share with students and also to keep the feeling of learning about new
music fresh in their minds. Similarly to the reason why teachers should nurture their
ongoing growth as perceptive listeners, I think about how I hope to always be
working on a secondary instrument in order to nurture my ongoing learning on the
process of learning an instrument.