8th Grade Women

2/12, 2/14 & 2/19

Impact on Student Learning

State Assessment Sight Reading

Objectives
 Improve sight reading skills with focus on
o Rhythm
o Solfege
o Tone
o Tempo

Warm-up for all 3 days

 Start on hum
o Do re mi re do
o Move to all vowels going up by half steps and down on whole steps
 Sit on a potato pan
 Bella Mama
 Split scales
o Unison
o Two parts
o Three parts
o Four parts
 Aural training game

2/12
Objective for today
 Improve aural skills
 Improve sight reading
 Finish “Sing…”

Process
 Warm-up
 Sectionals on “Sing…”
o Altos stay with me
o Sopranos go to Brodt
o Finish entire song
 Everyone come back and run the song
o Run fix run
 Sight Reading practice
o 2 minutes
 o Chant on solfege
o Sing on solfege

2/14
Objectives for today
 Work on aural skills
 Fix up “Sing…”
 Work on sight reading

Process
 Warm-up
 Run fix run “Sing”
o Check eighth note to quarter triple rhythm
o Then run again
 Do a sight reading example
o Give them 2 minutes
o Speak it first
o Sing it
 Work on theory workbook diatonic intervals lessons
o If they finish the intervals, working on 16th note pages

2/19
Objectives for today
 Work on aural skills
 Perfect “Sing…”
 Learn “Oye”
 Work on Sight Reading

Process
 Warm-up
 Run fix run “sing”
o Check rhythms again
o Run again
 Learn hook of Oye
o Do by section, aurally
o Learn every part that it comes up
 Sight Reading
Rubric

1 2 3 4

Rhythm Rhythm was Rhythm was Rhythm was No rhythmic

ignored inconsistent. consistent with mistakes were
completely. few mistakes. made.
Tone There was no Tone quality was Tone was Tone was always
good tone quality. inconsistent. consistent with correct.
few mistakes.
Tempo Tempo was Tempo was very Tempo was Tempo was
ignored inconsistent. consistent with always consistent.
completely. few slowdowns or
speed ups.
Solfege Solfege was not Solfege was Solfege was Solfege was
used. wrong or mostly correct completely
inconsistent. with few correct.
mistakes.
Togetherness Choir was not Choir was Choir was mostly Choir was always
together at all. occasionally together with few together.
together. separations.

Pre-Assessment
Rhythm – 3
Tone – 3
Tempo – 2
Solfege – 3
Togetherness – 2

Post-Assessment
Rhythm – 3
Tone – 4
Tempo – 4
Solfege – 4
Togetherness – 3
Reflection

This segment overall seemed to be very helpful for the students. They are getting ready
for State Assessment, and the sight reading is the part that it seems they are the least
comfortable with right now. The way I did my Pre-Assessment is we did a practice session with
the sight reading where I gave them the two minutes and they did it without my help. I then
used my rubric to measure where they are as a class. With the Pre-Assessment, I found that the
major things they needed to work on are rhythm and tempo. The notes and solfege were
mostly right, but when they got to tricky spots, rhythm and tempo would go out the window as
they tried to sound out the notes.
One of the ways I worked on this was when we were practicing sight reading, before
they sang it, we would simply speak the solfege on rhythm. This way they were focusing on less
things at a time. When we then went back to singing it, it was much more successful. This is a
strategy I told them they should use during their two minutes on their own. Since this was a
group activity, I tried to give them activities that the whole class could use. When they do the
sight reading at assessment, they have the two minutes to do whatever they want to do, so
what I did with this learning period is give them tools to use while they were doing their two
minutes of practice.
The results showed me that not only did I manage to increase the overall outcome of
their sight reading, I was able to fix the rhythm and tempo problems as well. Now this may not
always be a consistent result, since as the difficulty increases, the problems they had will
resurface, but the tools I gave them to use will always be applicable.
Another thing I did, which I do every class, is play an aural skills game with them at the
beginning right after their warm-up. This game consists of me singing pitches on solfege for
them to echo back to me. This progresses into me just using hand symbols and them singing the
pitches back. The purpose of this is to give the students a better grasp on what different
intervals should sound like so that when they are looking at a sight reading example, or a piece
of music in general, they are able to hear what the music should sound like in their head before
they even start singing it.