a. The national standard is "performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.

" The state standard is "the student will sing and perform on instruments a variety of music, alone and with others." The state indicator is "demonstrate proper technique and appropriate posture when playing instruments alone and in a variety of ensembles." The learning goal is that "the students will be able to play the correct articulations in Imperium at eighty percent correctness."

b. I will assess the students by first observing the students as they play several exercises Ive constructed to reinforce articulations. Then I will listen to the students as they play specific sections in the piece Imperium, where playing the correct articulation is important. Lastly I will have the students play the entire piece of "Imperium," to score them to see what we need to work on next time.

c. In my rubric I'll be looking for five key things. Tone quality, which is how rich and full the sound is. Intonation, this is how well in tune they are playing in. Rhythm, this is how accurate they are play rhythms during their performance. Musicality, how well they demonstrate tempo, dynamics, and phrasing. Finally their technique, this is how well their performance demonstrates overall mastery of the music. I will communicate these things with students by going through each thing I'm looking for before I assess them. I will also make a copy of the rubric and give it to students so they can be looking over it. This way they know what exactly I'm looking for.

d. I plan on collecting the students overall scores and how each student did on the musicality and rhythm part. I will collect this data, by using a excel spread sheet on my laptop. I will put in the score for each area I've selected for each student and their overall score. I find this to be most efficient way to assess students and by using excel this will allow me to easily see the progress of the entire class.

a. What instructional strategies will you use as part of the assessment? Provide a rationale for your choices. b. What learning activities and student groupings will you use to prepare your students for the assessment? Provide a rationale for your choices. c. What materials and resources, including technology, will you use to administer the assessment? Provide a rationale for your choices.

a. I will model each exercise I want the students to complete for the assessment. This will help students know exactly what I want them to do, so they can be successful on the learning activity. I will also use scaffolding instruction to slowly build up to where they play the entire piece for the final assessment. Scaffolding will slowly ease them into the lesson.

b. I will first observe the students as they play several exercises Ive constructed to reinforce articulations. This will give me a idea what we need to focus on later on in the lesson. I will also listen to the students as they play specific sections in the piece Imperium, where playing the

correct articulation and rhythm is important. This will allow me to find trouble areas to fix and give me a opportunity to work with smaller sections within the band. Lastly I will have the students play the entire piece of "Imperium," to score them to see what we need to work on next time. This is where I will begin assessing students to see how well they play the piece.

c. I plan on using a metronome to keep students in time. At this point in a seventh graders musical career they are usually not very good with keeping time, so using a metronome will allow them to focus on playing the correct articulations and rhythms. I will also play the articulations myself, so students know exactly what to play.

a. Identify two Focus Students with different learning needs and for whom you will need to modify the assessment. Provide a rationale for selecting each of the students. Refer to them as Focus Student 1 and Focus Student 2 as you respond to the guiding prompts below. b. Based on their specific learning needs, how will you modify the assessment for each of the two Focus Students? Provide a rationale for each decision.

a. The student I chose to be focus student 1 is a great student. She excels at her instrument, but she takes a little longer to catch on to things. For example, if I spent five minutes teaching a rhythmic pattern to the class, I would need to spend ten minutes on the same rhythmic pattern so focus student 1 could learn it. The student I chose to be focus student 2 has many strengths, but they have a hard time learning a piece music without someone showing them exactly what to do. This student needs "handholding" when learning a piece of music or rhythm, but once the student learns what to do they excel without help.

b. I plan on modify the assessment for focus student 1 by just spending more time on selected activities. I can't spend too much time on each activity, but I will spend extra time on areas that I see focus student 1 struggling on. For focus student 2 I'll bring her up to the front of the class and have her watch me demonstrate the assessment activities. While I'm showing her what to do, I have the rest of the class going through the assessment with me. This way everyone is on task.

a. How did your rubric/scoring guide align with your learning goal(s) for the lesson? Provide a rationale. b. Describe the graphic representation of your collected data. Based on your graphic representation, analyze the assessment data to determine your students' progress toward the learning goal(s). c. How efficient was the data-collection process that you selected? Cite examples to support your analysis. d. How effective were the instructional strategies, learning activities, student groupings, and materials and resources, including technology, for student learning? Cite examples to support your analysis. e. Describe how you engaged students in analyzing their own assessment results to help them understand their progress toward the learning goal(s).

a. My scoring guide aligned directly with my learning goals because I had the students work on rhythmic and musicality activities. Those were the two things I was assessing. How well they played the articulation exercise, if they played the correct rhythms in specific places in "Imperium," and if they were able to put those two things together by playing the entire piece.

b. I have two graphic representations of my collected data. One is a line graph and the other is a bar graph. They show how the students scored on the rhythmic and musicality assessment. Each assessment is on a point scale from one to ten, adding to a total of 20 possible points. Overall the class did pretty well with what I wanted them to learn. There is plenty of room for improvement, because ideally I would like all students to be at a nine or ten. c. My solution to data collection was efficient. I had my laptop in front of me and while the students played through the piece I was plugging in scores for each student. I had them play the piece a couple times so I could get around to each student. d. Overall I think everything went ideal. Since I needed a good amount of time to do the assessment towards the end of the lesson, I had to manage time efficiently. Scaffolding seem to be the best approach in the lesson, slowly adding complexity to the lesson, instead of just starting out hard. I found passing out the rubric really helped, it allowed students to see exactly what I was looking for and if they were confused about what something meant, they could ask questions to figure it out. e. When I passed out the rubric to the entire class, we went through each possible assessment. During this time I allowed students to ask questions to figure out what exactly they didn't understand about the rubric. Once we made it through the rubric I highlighted what I would looking for when they played "Imperium" all the way through. I found this model to really work with the students, rather than not telling them what I was looking for.

a. What did you learn overall about the progress of each of the two Focus Students toward achieving the learning goal(s)? Cite evidence from the work samples from each of the two Focus Students and other assessment data to support your analysis.

b. Based on the assessment data and/or your observations, what impact did your modification(s) of the assessment have on the learning of each of the two Focus Students? Cite examples to support your analysis. c. How effective were the instructional strategies, learning activities, student groupings, and materials and resources, including technology, for student learning? Cite examples for each of the two Focus Students to support your analysis. d. Describe how you engaged each of the two Focus Students in analyzing his or her own assessment results to help understand progress toward the learning goal(s).

a. I learned that focus student 1 was mostly able achieve the learning goals. She struggled in a few places, but overall did a fine job. When we worked on the articulation exercise she missed a few of the articulations, but got most of them right. Reviewing the overall assessment, she scored as expected a seven on musicality (articulations), but did a little better on rhythms. I learned that focus student 2 did a little below average on achieving the learning goals. I was not able to work with her one on one for every goal. I was able to fit in a couple times to work with her in front of the class, but not the entire time. When we worked on the articulation exercise she missed a good many of the articulations, but she did get a decent amount right. Reviewing the overall assessment, she scored where I thought she would based on how she does normally in the class. When I am able to work with her one on one, she usually does very well, but I cannot do that for the entire time.

b. When we spent just a little bit more time on the specific rhythms in "Imperium," I noticed that focus student 1 scored a bit higher than normal. This was not a problem at all to do and I plan on spending a little more time in the future, because not only does it benefit this student, but it does

benefit the entire class. When I brought focus student 2 in front of the class to do a little one on one, but multitasking with the entire class, I noticed that focus student 2 did much better on the areas I was able to work with her on. The areas I was not able to work with her on, she struggled. This becomes a bit of problem because I cannot spend the entire time with most of my attention on this student.

c. Overall I think mostly everything went the best it could. Spending a little more time on key things seemed to really help focus student 1. This was not much of a issue to incorporate into the lesson. Scaffolding seemed to generally work well with these two students, adding complexity too soon into the lesson would of been a problem. Focus student 2 is a catch 22. While this student excels when I am able to give most of my attention to them, I can't do this for the entire lesson because in detracts from other student learning. I will continue working with this student to help them be more independent on learning music. d. With some students I privately went over my assessment with them. With the focus students I explained what they need to work on in the future to improve their music skills. Focus student 2 in particular, I gave her a music book to work through on her own to help her become more of a independent learner, rather than needing me to be one on one with her. With focus student 1, I laid out a practice plan so she knows what to work on, and how much time she needs to spend on these things.

a. How does your data analysis inform or guide future instruction for the whole class? b. What modifications to the assessment would you make for future use? Provide a rationale.

c. What modifications for future use would you make in your choice of instructional strategies, learning activities, student groupings, and materials and resources, including technology? Provide a rationale. d. In what ways would an assessment that is different from the type used in this task allow students to further demonstrate their achievement of the learning goal(s)?

a. My data shows me that I need to work on rhythm and musicality (articulations) with the students. The average score in rhythm was 7.16 and the average score in musicality was 7.25. Both are pretty close and this tells me overall we need to spend more time on both. We need to get the average to at least 8, but ideally it would be nice to get closer to 9.

b. In the future I might work on only one thing, so instead of me working on rhythms and musicality, I would probably only work on rhythms for that lesson. This may increase the scores since we would only be focusing on rhythms rather than two different things.

c. I would probably modify the amount of learning activities I would do with the students. I think adding more variety of exercises may help the students, instead of just doing a couple and working on the main piece. Working on several exercises relating to the same thing might be very beneficial to the students.

d. If I used Smart Music with the students, I think that might have helped them to further achieve the learning goals. Smart Music is kind of like a video game called "Guitar Hero," it tells you if you played the right articulation, rhythm, and note. When you finish playing the exercise or piece of music it gives you a grade and the student and/or teacher can review what the student

missed and got right. It is a really useful piece of technology, but we are limited to computers, which is a problem with a big class.

a. How does your data analysis inform or guide future instruction for each of the two Focus Students? b. What modifications would you make to the assessment for future use for each of the two Focus Students? Provide a rationale. c. What modifications would you make in your choice of instructional strategies, learning activities, student groupings, and materials and resources, including technology, for future use for each of the two Focus Students? Provide a rationale

a. It tells me that both of these students have room to improve. It always tells me that I need to plan on spending more time on key things and maybe try working one on one with a few students when I can.

b. I might spend more time demonstrating on what to do, rather than telling them what to do. I think verbal explanations work, but I also think visual demonstrations work. Instead of me giving more attention to focus student 2 with my visual demonstration, I'll try also doing this with focus student 1, because this might help them greatly.

c. For the two focus students I would provide them with more listening examples. Instead of me just playing the entire recording over the speakers once. I could split up sections of the recording and play them at key areas that need working on. I know that this would really benefit the students. This would allow them to hear how professionals play it, so they can try to mimic it.