(14.1) Think of a lesson plan from your licensure area. Knowing that assessment is an integral part of teaching, explain at least four informal and formal assessments that you will use in your lesson plan to provide you with feedback and involve the students in assessing their own learning.
Informal assessment takes place constantly throughout the course of a music lesson. Asking students to play their individual parts alone or in their section, with quick, verbal feedback from the teacher is an example of informal assessment. Students can also assess their peers in this way; allowing the ensemble time to openly critique itself is a great way to remove the "teaching" from the instruction and get students to listen to a voice other than the teacher's for help. I can also ask students to listen to a recording of their performance and verbally critique and discuss possible failures or successes in the way they played the music. Finally, I can illicit feedback from the ensemble to find out if a piece is too difficult or too easy for them, from their perspective.
Band directors often fail to successfully implement formal assessment in their lessons and curriculum. While the best way to improve the quality of the ensemble is through constant informal assessment, formal assessments can help gauge where individual students are as musicians. I can assign worksheets to identify chord progressions and intervals in the music we are playing. Students can also be asked to listen to a recording of either themselves or another musician and answer specific questions about what they hear. Assigning research projects based on compositions, composers, and other factors in music is a good assessment of a student's skills as a musicologist, not just an instrument-player.
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