![]() ![]() Some people do divide the curriculum into isolated units on musical elements - like a unit on form, a unit on dynamics, etc. If we were learning how to read and write a symbol primarily, we would probably need a lot of additional music to round out our musical skills beyond reading. Preparing and practicing involve so so so so so much more than figuring out the number of sounds on a beat and learning how to read it in standard notation. When we prepare and practice musical concepts, we are engaging in singing, speaking, playing, moving, partwork, improvisation, arranging, aural identification, community collaboration, critical thinking…… However, there’s another way to approach learning that’s much more holistic. That’s true in some situations - for some teachers, that’s what they care about. Sometimes we talk about learning a rhythmic or melodic concept and we imagine that means primarily reading the notation. What goes into learning rhythmic and melodic concepts? Lucy Green and Ruth Wright have done work on a related field of informal music education. This is a field of study I haven’t jumped into yet. all these things play into an aural landscape of language. But movies, TV, conversations with friends, books they’re read…. ![]() Students hear and engage with language outside of the sight words they learn at school. In my opinion, a convenient parallel is with language acquisition. We need the patterns to exist authentically before students can use them later. In audiation, students collect musical patterns, they hold on to them, and then use them as predictions on new situations. Incidental learning creates the backdrop for aural awareness that students use later, especially in audiation, or making predictions. Students are always watching and listening. Incidental learning is like allllll the learning that takes place around the target objective. When we have deliberate learning experiences, we have a clear objective, we have an activity that meets the objective, and we have an assessment to make sure the objective was met. Incidental & Deliberate Learning Experiences Integrate other repertoire often as you want, and as often as you see it serving your students in the long run. How are these decisions impacted by scheduling? ![]()
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