Kayla Buchanan, one of this year’s Emerging Pioneers in Music Education, offers her reflections on how SongWorks has enriched her teaching practices.
For one of my assignments as an Emerging Pioneer for the 2025 SongWorks Conference, I chose to create an activity that promotes SongWorks principles and practices.
The principles I chose to focus on for this assignment are:
- Students deserve an engaging learning environment in which they feel safe enough to demonstrate freely their understandings and skills through various types of participation. (SW 1, principle 1)
- Student learning is the responsibility of both teachers and students. (SW 1, principle 2)
- The major goal of music study is the development of a responsiveness to music. (SW 2, principle 1)
This school year I have been pushing for my students to develop more responsiveness to music. I have found that my students seem to connect more to the music when they have something physical to attach to the piece of music. One way I have done this is to introduce maps for larger pieces of music. We have done Hedwig’s Theme from Harry Potter, Skating by Vince Guaraldi, and Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns. In 4th grade we have been talking about the meter and form of marches, so I decided to create a map and short unit for them to explore John Philip Sousa’s The Stars and Stripes Forever. Without any introduction, I played the music and had students follow my actions. We did a series of movements in groups of two such as: elbow-wrist, head-shoulders, knees-toes, heel-toes, as well as conducting in two. After following me, I had them think about what meter it could be based on what we had just done with our movements. This led into a discussion about 2/4 vs. 4/4.
During the next class we felt the meter again in our bodies and then moved on to feeling the meter with tennis balls. We would throw the ball to the floor on the strong beat, and on the weak beat we would catch the ball. During this activity half the class would conduct the song while the other half experienced the strong and weak beats with tennis balls and then we switched.
The next time they came to music we explored rhythm with a body percussion play-along video. I wanted the students to be able to internalize not only the beat but also further experience the different sections of the piece so we could explore the form. After the body percussion I let them listen again and see how many sections they could identify.
At the beginning of the next class I showed my map to my kids and played the music. Rather than give them instructions, I asked them to puzzle out the map. After the students had several turns through the map, I led and pointed out several sections of the march. We then watched a short video on the history and form of The Stars and Stripes Forever.
It was exciting for me to see how my students connected to this music from the first day to the last. Students went from asking, “Why are we listening to this parade music?” to “Woah, I can hear and see all the sections now!” By the end of the unit we were able to label each section’s 1st and 2nd strain, trio, and final strain. This school year I have seen how maps can help students not only develop musical responsiveness but also take responsibility for their music learning.
References
Bennett, P. D., & Bartholomew, D. R. (1997). SongWorks I: Singing in the education of children. Bozeman, MT: SongWorks Press.
Bennett P. D. & Bartholomew, D. R. (1999). SongWorks II: Singing from Sound to Symbol. Bozeman, MT: SongWorks Press.
