RHYTHM READING - BELL RINGERS (CAROL KRUEGER)
Rhythm Level A
Rhythm Level B
Rhythm Level C
Rhythm Level D
Rhythm Dictation 1
Rhythm Dictation 2
Rhythm Level E
Rhythm Level B
Rhythm Level C
Rhythm Level D
Rhythm Dictation 1
Rhythm Dictation 2
Rhythm Level E
Solfege Warm ups
Ascending intervals
Descending intervals
Soft Kitty
Blame it on the Leprechaun
Japanese Frog Song
Black Socks
Descending intervals
Soft Kitty
Blame it on the Leprechaun
Japanese Frog Song
Black Socks
Choral engagement activities
Throw Catch
Sasha
Omo chio
Rockin Robin
Sasha
Omo chio
Rockin Robin
digital Assessment Option resources
Flipgrid - This website asks students to upload pictures, videos, files, evidence for the task assigned. It is designed in a modern, student friendly, and fun way. Students liked using this as a fun activity while working in teams. It was very easy for me to set up. It is a “closed” classroom so other people can’t see student videos. This is a viable platform for a performance based class to show work/knowledge. Flipgrid does talk with google classroom. Students were more reluctant to use this if they were recording as an individual. The teacher needs to manual assess/score student work.
Tunelark - This website works on aural training skills for students to identify the differences between music intervals. Students can collect daily xp points or do assignments specified by the teacher. Students use a code to log into the teacher’s classroom. The students enjoyed that this activity looks like and plays like a game. Some were very competitive in the race to have the most xp on the leaderboard. Aural training is not something we have time to practice during active class very often. While tunelark does provide individual feedback it does not show the teacher specifically what the errors in knowledge were for each student. Aural skills are something that some students were naturally very good at and others really struggled. They were frustrated with the program if they had errors in understanding and were not working on it in the classroom to ask for further teaching and support.
Sight Reading Factory - This website is not a free resource but is extremely affordable on a school budget. Investing in a teacher account allows it to be used in the full group setting and individual practice/assessment can be given by adding student accounts. This is a great tool for individual assessment and tracking. It can be set up with teacher customized levels or left open for students to have choice in difficulty. I prefer to push out assignments that align with the key signature and time signature related to a current performance piece. Students can listen to themselves and retry as many times as necessary before submission. This company has good customer service and is very responsive and helpful. Some students use this as a learning/assessment tool willingly. Others still become self-conscious about recording themselves. It does not auto grade (not possible to do very accurately by computer) so providing a “score” and feedback requires teacher time to listen to all of the assignments. When placing students in “levels” - their assignments/scores are not saved in their account if they are moved by the teacher onto the next level. It is helpful for the teacher to keep an additional record of scores if being used as assessment.
Music Theory.net - This website has several pre-designed lesson plans about different music concepts for students to complete. They are very thorough lessons with instruction pieces to read and then assessment components. The teacher can dictate which lessons they want students to complete and push those out to students via a web link. When students are finished with the assessment it gives students a code and that code is submitted back to the teacher for the teacher to login with the code to see the student results. Their accuracy is automatically graded. The music theory topics to choose from are good introductory theory ideas for students and basic music knowledge. The lessons are not particularly colorful or interesting which makes it harder to engage younger students as it doesn't come with an exciting hook. The process of sending the teacher the code for the teacher to log back in to see if the student results is a bit labor-intensive but does provide viable data.
Kahoot - Teachers can utilize pre-designed sets of questions or build their own questions from scratch. Students begin the “virtual game room” by entering the room code provided by the teacher. Questions can be true/false, multiple choice, or open-ended questions. Students answer on their device but they do not see the answer responses on their advice device they only see their color coded buttons, so they must be able to see the teachers projected screen to play. There is a leaderboard and cool music that makes it a fun game like atmosphere. It plays like a game so students often get excited and cheer. We had trouble using it as a valid assessment because of the student excitement and rushing to answer the questions. The teacher does receive a report in the end about what answers individual students got right or wrong. If you are using it as an assessment, make sure students put their actual name as their log in and not a screen name so you know who they are. In the end this was a fun formative assessment for students but was not something I could use as valid data justifying that they were able to show proficiency.
Google Forms - I appreciate the many different question styles and formats now available in Google forms to be used as an assessment. Google forms can be locked so a student cannot access other information on their device until they have completed the form. When it's being used as a test, Google forms is beneficial musically because I can insert pictures, audio, or visuals to have the students listen/watch and respond to. Google forms can be graded automatically with various extensions. This is a significant factor when trying to grade a large quantity of students. It also feels more like a “test” for the students than the other game-like tools. Students are able to work at their own pace. Students do not receive instant feedback on their answers until it is sent through the grading tool and results are emailed to students. Google forms are used frequently in education. Students are very familiar with this technology but sometimes it is overused. Students don’t respond with excitement and motivation when assessed using this type of tool.
Rhythm Trainer - Rhythm trainer is an online website that is used for music dictation and rhythm activities. It has two different modes. The first mode plays a pattern auditorily and the students see the visual pattern choices and choose the correct pattern that matches. The second mode is when the students hear the pattern and they have to notate the pattern using the symbols given. The website keeps track of the student percentage and quantity of answers correct. Students seem to enjoy this website and it can be played very quickly as an assessment taken in a short amount of time. Students get instant feedback on their responses. Sometimes I ask students to complete 20 examples. Sometimes I ask students to play until they achieve 75%. A negative to using this assessment tool is that students have to set up their own screen using the teacher guidelines. Students need to be able to select in the beginning quarter notes eighth notes sixteenth notes and know that they are not using syncopation in a particular assessment. It can be challenging for students to select all of the correct things. When their assessment is finished or when they get to the point where they are asked to stop (that could be a certain number of questions or that could be a percentage point) the student needs to click on “email results” and type in the teacher’s email address. If the student clicks out of the Rhythm Trainer window before they have emailed their results to the teacher all of their work is lost.
Edpuzzle - This tool talks with both Google classroom and canvas. A video is uploaded from YouTube or can be made directly by the teacher. The video is then watched by the students and edpuzzle reports back in live time which students are actively watching the video. So when sitting in a classroom full of screens it says directly to the teacher who is on task and who is not. Quizzes can be embedded in the video so the video will stop at certain points for students to answer questions. Students then have the opportunity to go back and re-watch portions of the video before they answer the questions for a higher chance of success. The questions can be open ended questions that the teacher grades later, they can be true/false, multiple choice, or they can simply be an informative statement that the teacher shares. This is a very effective assessment for all and provides several potential accommodations for learning modalities. This is probably one of my favorite learning tools because it is easy to manage both in the classroom and for students to do if they are working on it as a homework assignment outside of the classroom. It gives very accurate data about when the students completed the task and their accuracy in knowledge. It can be used as an introductory activity to a topic or can be used as a summative assessment after students have been learning about a topic. This is an effective flipped classroom tool. Students don't mind using it. It's easy to access and easy to follow. Students also get instant feedback, unless the question was set up as a teacher grade question. Once a video edpuzzle task is set up it can be shared with multiple classrooms of students and can be reused from year to year.
Plickers - Plickers has been one of my favorite classroom tools for assessment for the last several years. Students do not need to have a technology device. The teacher needs to have the plickers website open and projected on the screen. The teacher enters questions that are either multiple choice or true-false into the plicker system and then assigns students a plicker card. The plicker cards are printed off on a piece of paper similar to an individualized QR code so even though all students are answering at the same time they are not looking at an individual technology device. They cannot cheat from each other because their cards look very different. When a question goes up on the screen the student selects what they want their answer to be: A B C or D and then they turn their card so the correct answer is on the top. The iPad then scans the room of students getting everybody's answer at one time. It tabulates how many students have answered so the teacher can make sure all students in class have answered and then it gives instant feedback graphing the results of the class on the responses. I really like this tech tool because it gives instant feedback while the assessment is happening. It also collects individual data. It is active so we do it together as a whole class. Students aren't using an individual technology device which for some with anxiety helps them test better. A pitfall to using plickers is if students are not holding their card flat when the ipad scans or if students have locked in their answer and then twist their card later while the iPad is still scanning it may read a different answer if their card is now facing a different direction. It is helpful to have students place their cards face down once they have finished answering the question so there are no errors. Most students enjoy plickers as opposed to a paper and pencil test because it is active however they do have to wait for the whole class to answer the question before moving on to the next question. They can't move at their own pace so some test-takers have to have patience.
Google Classroom vs. Canvas
Tunelark - This website works on aural training skills for students to identify the differences between music intervals. Students can collect daily xp points or do assignments specified by the teacher. Students use a code to log into the teacher’s classroom. The students enjoyed that this activity looks like and plays like a game. Some were very competitive in the race to have the most xp on the leaderboard. Aural training is not something we have time to practice during active class very often. While tunelark does provide individual feedback it does not show the teacher specifically what the errors in knowledge were for each student. Aural skills are something that some students were naturally very good at and others really struggled. They were frustrated with the program if they had errors in understanding and were not working on it in the classroom to ask for further teaching and support.
Sight Reading Factory - This website is not a free resource but is extremely affordable on a school budget. Investing in a teacher account allows it to be used in the full group setting and individual practice/assessment can be given by adding student accounts. This is a great tool for individual assessment and tracking. It can be set up with teacher customized levels or left open for students to have choice in difficulty. I prefer to push out assignments that align with the key signature and time signature related to a current performance piece. Students can listen to themselves and retry as many times as necessary before submission. This company has good customer service and is very responsive and helpful. Some students use this as a learning/assessment tool willingly. Others still become self-conscious about recording themselves. It does not auto grade (not possible to do very accurately by computer) so providing a “score” and feedback requires teacher time to listen to all of the assignments. When placing students in “levels” - their assignments/scores are not saved in their account if they are moved by the teacher onto the next level. It is helpful for the teacher to keep an additional record of scores if being used as assessment.
Music Theory.net - This website has several pre-designed lesson plans about different music concepts for students to complete. They are very thorough lessons with instruction pieces to read and then assessment components. The teacher can dictate which lessons they want students to complete and push those out to students via a web link. When students are finished with the assessment it gives students a code and that code is submitted back to the teacher for the teacher to login with the code to see the student results. Their accuracy is automatically graded. The music theory topics to choose from are good introductory theory ideas for students and basic music knowledge. The lessons are not particularly colorful or interesting which makes it harder to engage younger students as it doesn't come with an exciting hook. The process of sending the teacher the code for the teacher to log back in to see if the student results is a bit labor-intensive but does provide viable data.
Kahoot - Teachers can utilize pre-designed sets of questions or build their own questions from scratch. Students begin the “virtual game room” by entering the room code provided by the teacher. Questions can be true/false, multiple choice, or open-ended questions. Students answer on their device but they do not see the answer responses on their advice device they only see their color coded buttons, so they must be able to see the teachers projected screen to play. There is a leaderboard and cool music that makes it a fun game like atmosphere. It plays like a game so students often get excited and cheer. We had trouble using it as a valid assessment because of the student excitement and rushing to answer the questions. The teacher does receive a report in the end about what answers individual students got right or wrong. If you are using it as an assessment, make sure students put their actual name as their log in and not a screen name so you know who they are. In the end this was a fun formative assessment for students but was not something I could use as valid data justifying that they were able to show proficiency.
Google Forms - I appreciate the many different question styles and formats now available in Google forms to be used as an assessment. Google forms can be locked so a student cannot access other information on their device until they have completed the form. When it's being used as a test, Google forms is beneficial musically because I can insert pictures, audio, or visuals to have the students listen/watch and respond to. Google forms can be graded automatically with various extensions. This is a significant factor when trying to grade a large quantity of students. It also feels more like a “test” for the students than the other game-like tools. Students are able to work at their own pace. Students do not receive instant feedback on their answers until it is sent through the grading tool and results are emailed to students. Google forms are used frequently in education. Students are very familiar with this technology but sometimes it is overused. Students don’t respond with excitement and motivation when assessed using this type of tool.
Rhythm Trainer - Rhythm trainer is an online website that is used for music dictation and rhythm activities. It has two different modes. The first mode plays a pattern auditorily and the students see the visual pattern choices and choose the correct pattern that matches. The second mode is when the students hear the pattern and they have to notate the pattern using the symbols given. The website keeps track of the student percentage and quantity of answers correct. Students seem to enjoy this website and it can be played very quickly as an assessment taken in a short amount of time. Students get instant feedback on their responses. Sometimes I ask students to complete 20 examples. Sometimes I ask students to play until they achieve 75%. A negative to using this assessment tool is that students have to set up their own screen using the teacher guidelines. Students need to be able to select in the beginning quarter notes eighth notes sixteenth notes and know that they are not using syncopation in a particular assessment. It can be challenging for students to select all of the correct things. When their assessment is finished or when they get to the point where they are asked to stop (that could be a certain number of questions or that could be a percentage point) the student needs to click on “email results” and type in the teacher’s email address. If the student clicks out of the Rhythm Trainer window before they have emailed their results to the teacher all of their work is lost.
Edpuzzle - This tool talks with both Google classroom and canvas. A video is uploaded from YouTube or can be made directly by the teacher. The video is then watched by the students and edpuzzle reports back in live time which students are actively watching the video. So when sitting in a classroom full of screens it says directly to the teacher who is on task and who is not. Quizzes can be embedded in the video so the video will stop at certain points for students to answer questions. Students then have the opportunity to go back and re-watch portions of the video before they answer the questions for a higher chance of success. The questions can be open ended questions that the teacher grades later, they can be true/false, multiple choice, or they can simply be an informative statement that the teacher shares. This is a very effective assessment for all and provides several potential accommodations for learning modalities. This is probably one of my favorite learning tools because it is easy to manage both in the classroom and for students to do if they are working on it as a homework assignment outside of the classroom. It gives very accurate data about when the students completed the task and their accuracy in knowledge. It can be used as an introductory activity to a topic or can be used as a summative assessment after students have been learning about a topic. This is an effective flipped classroom tool. Students don't mind using it. It's easy to access and easy to follow. Students also get instant feedback, unless the question was set up as a teacher grade question. Once a video edpuzzle task is set up it can be shared with multiple classrooms of students and can be reused from year to year.
Plickers - Plickers has been one of my favorite classroom tools for assessment for the last several years. Students do not need to have a technology device. The teacher needs to have the plickers website open and projected on the screen. The teacher enters questions that are either multiple choice or true-false into the plicker system and then assigns students a plicker card. The plicker cards are printed off on a piece of paper similar to an individualized QR code so even though all students are answering at the same time they are not looking at an individual technology device. They cannot cheat from each other because their cards look very different. When a question goes up on the screen the student selects what they want their answer to be: A B C or D and then they turn their card so the correct answer is on the top. The iPad then scans the room of students getting everybody's answer at one time. It tabulates how many students have answered so the teacher can make sure all students in class have answered and then it gives instant feedback graphing the results of the class on the responses. I really like this tech tool because it gives instant feedback while the assessment is happening. It also collects individual data. It is active so we do it together as a whole class. Students aren't using an individual technology device which for some with anxiety helps them test better. A pitfall to using plickers is if students are not holding their card flat when the ipad scans or if students have locked in their answer and then twist their card later while the iPad is still scanning it may read a different answer if their card is now facing a different direction. It is helpful to have students place their cards face down once they have finished answering the question so there are no errors. Most students enjoy plickers as opposed to a paper and pencil test because it is active however they do have to wait for the whole class to answer the question before moving on to the next question. They can't move at their own pace so some test-takers have to have patience.
Google Classroom vs. Canvas