In this post we talked about why we need options for music education that are as accessible as possible to all our learners. We discussed the three brain networks that impact how students show up in our classrooms (Affective, Recognition, and Strategic), and some general strategies to consider when it comes to UDL.

Today we’ll zoom in on the Affective brain networks. In this model of brain research, the Affective networks are responsible for the level of engagement students experience in learning, as well as their motivation level to become a lifelong musical learner. We’ll look at concrete examples of providing multiple means of engagement in elementary general music.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it can get us started in thinking through practical applications of UDL in music.

Let’s jump in.

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Do I Need to Add More Means of Engagement?

For some of us, UDL is a framework we learned in a recent teacher training course. For many of us, we’re learning about this approach after many years already in the classroom. When we hear about a new approach in education, we might wonder if we really need to add one more thing to our list of things to think about.

How will we know if students are being provided enough means of engagement?

The answer might be more simple than we think. It doesn’t come down to what our principals say we need to do, or a checklist from a PD session, or a trend in education.

Look at the Students

If students are off task and unengaged in learning, it may be time to try out some new methods of recruiting interest, motivation, and self regulation. If there are students who struggle to participate in musical tasks - for whatever reason or whatever perceived reason - we can brainstorm more ways to engage them.

We can also ask students about their experiences in our classrooms and listen to their feedback. If their answers show that they don’t feel particularly interested in our curriculum, way of teaching, or level of ownership they’re given, it might be time to explore some new ideas.

Our goal is for students to be purposeful, motivated, and musical in our classrooms. Providing multiple means of engagement is how we can partner with elementary musicians so they make as much music as possible.

Affective Network in Elementary General Music

The Guidelines for Engagement:

Recruiting Interest
We like to learn about things that are interesting! How can frame or rework our presentations to nurture more student interest?
Sustaining Effort and Persistence:
Musicianship takes practice over time. How can we help students be attentive through the whole process?
Self Regulation:
When we self regulate emotional responses, we contribute to a classroom environment that’s conducive to learning. How can we help students regulate their behavior so they’re set up for success?

These are guidelines from Cast, with examples of how they can be applied in elementary general music.

Recruiting Interest (Guideline 7)

Recruiting Interest Elementary General Music

We like to learn about things that are interesting! These are ways we can partner with students to engage them in classroom activities. Much of this has to do with the repertoire we select, but it also has to do with student roles in the classroom. Are students active participants in musical tasks, or are they only being asked to follow teacher directions quickly? Here are some ideas for adjusting our learning environments to be more interesting to students.

Optimize individual choice and autonomy (7.1)

Provide learners with as much discretion and autonomy as possible by providing choices:

When we build lessons with student choice embedded, we not only strengthen our overall musicianship expectations, but we put students in a better place to take ownership of their part in learning. This starts with clear goals in our curriculum planning. From there, we can be flexible and creative about how students will show their learning. There are so many opportunities for student choice in the music room! Students can choose whether they will tiptoe or slide to their spots. They might choose to clap the rhythm of the words or pat the steady beat. They could choose to come in 1st or 2nd in a two-part round. They might choose to play an ostinato or clap the rhythm of the main song. Let’s imagine we want to expand students’ melodic vocabulary by exploring new melodic patterns that use low la in the extended pentatone. Early in this vocabulary building phase, we’ll want students to show melodic contour of a specific pattern. Students can choose if they’ll show the melody through movement or through body percussion. Since both options in this scenario move students toward our learning objective, we don’t need to dictate how students show melodic contour. Both pathways give us the evidence we need to move learning forward.

Allow learners to participate in the design of classroom activities and academic tasks:

Students can help us create arrangements for sharing activities like informances or other presentations. They can also help create arrangements just for fun to be performed in class. If letting students create class arrangements is new for you or your students, an easy way to get started is with rhythmic building blocks. When we work with a folk song, students can use rhythmic building blocks to create their own rhythms in small groups. With their rhythms created, we can decide as a class if the rhythms will be a B section the class plays all together, or if a few of them will be ostinati that happen throughout the whole song.

Optimize relevance, value, and authenticity (7.2)

Vary activities and sources of information so that they can be age and ability appropriate:

Among other criteria, repertoire we engage with in the music room should be repertoire we expect students to enjoy! We can select repertoire that is age appropriate, and then see how students respond over time. Students can also suggest repertoire to be used in the music room. Using student-provided repertoire requires more time and creativity from us, but the buy-in from students makes it a worthwhile endeavor.

Design activities so that learning outcomes are authentic, communicate to real audiences, and reflect a purpose that is clear to the participants

When our musical tasks are authentic, they can be transferred to real-world scenarios outside of the music classroom. In an active musical learning environment, students learn music by musicing - by actively embodying musical ideas - not by simply being in the room while a teacher talks about musical ideas. This emphasis on active musicing engages students in authentic, real-world activities. When we think beyond things like worksheets and memorizing the lines and spaces of the staff, so many new possibilities open up like singing, playing instruments, speaking, moving, reading, writing, improvising, composing, arranging, and listening.

Minimize threats and distractions (7.3)

Create an accepting and supportive classroom climate:

From the first day of class, we can make sure our classrooms are safe places to learn. Our music classrooms should be places where student mistakes are welcomed and encouraged, and where forward motion is praised. Students might need coaching on the specific language to use in group work or in other classroom sharing activities when peers perform musically so the feedback is process-oriented.

Vary the social demands required for learning or performance, the perceived level of support and protection and the requirements for public display and evaluation:

Music engagement requires vulnerability on the part of us and our students, specifically when it comes to specific performance tasks such as singing or improvising. Because we learn by actively musicing, it's possible for the performance aspect of our classrooms to cause nervousness in some students. When we compare music learning to a traditional math class, this difference is highlighted well. When students learn math in a traditional classroom, they often sit at their desks while the teacher talks about math. When it’s time to show their knowledge, students often write down an answer on a worksheet. If a student has trouble with a specific math skill, their peers won’t know. In contrast, in an active music room students perform musical tasks to show their knowledge. The emphasis on authenticity can also cause anxiety for some students who can be concerned that if they don’t perform a skill well, everyone will know. We can help minimize threats and distractions by scaffolding skills well and lesson planning with intention so students aren’t put in a vulnerable position before they’re ready. When it's time to do a skill like singing or improvising, we can practice as a whole class, we can inner hear answers in our heads, we can practice with small groups, and then with partners all before necessarily asking students to perform alone.

Sustaining Effort and Persistence (Guideline 8)

Sustaining Effort and Persistence Elementary General Music

When we learn a new skill, we need a combination of challenges to move us forward and assistance to help us meet those challenges. Thoughtful practice over time and internal motivation are both necessary to create lifelong musical learners. How can we partner with students so they’re self-aware and motivated to persevere as they build musicianship over time? Because we see (on average) ages 5 - 11, the answers to this question will change as our students change with age, interest, and life experiences.

Heighten salience of goals and objectives (8.1)

Engage learners in assessment discussions of what constitutes excellence and generate relevant examples that connect to their cultural background and interests:

Students can be involved in the creation of goal setting and evaluation in the classroom! In preparation for an informance or another sharing event, students can think about what an excellent final product would be, and come up with a list of criteria to know they’ve reached the goal. Class-created rubrics can be helpful to get the whole group of musicians on the same page.

Learn More:
Active Embedded Assessment in Elementary General Music

Use prompts or scaffolds for visualizing desired outcome:

As we work toward an aural picture of musicianship, there are many ways we could achieve our desired outcomes! We could listen to field recordings. The teacher could demonstrate. We could listen to peer ideas. We could inner hear our desired vocal sounds. We could mime playing the instrument while inner hearing. We could map out the form of our arrangement on the board. There are many possibilities to provide an aural and visual image of the final musical goal!

Vary demands and resources to optimize challenge (8.2)

Vary the degrees of freedom for acceptable performance:

When we’re clear on our long-range and short-term learning goals, we get clarity on how much room we have for individual choice within those learning parameters. For example, if students are asked to perform a B section with rhythmic building blocks using patterns containing and beat and beat subdivision, there are many options embedded! Will students perform on text or on rhythm syllables? Will they clap the rhythms as they speak? Could they put the rhythms on body percussion? Will they add movements for each rhythm item? Will all cards have two beats or will some have four? Will students come up with the rhythms or will we provide them? We can consider what parameters we will set as teachers and what freedoms within those parameters students will have after we clarify our specific learning goals.

Emphasize process, effort, improvement in meeting standards as alternatives to external evaluation and competition:

Why should students be interested and engaged in our learning tasks? Is it to see their class score on a behavior chart? Is it the threat of punishment or potential for a reward (both two sides of the same threat-based coin)? Thoughtful practice over time and internal motivation are what create lifelong musical learners. We can help deemphasize stickers, charts, pizza parties, and competition by emphasizing student progress, effort, and improvement. Instead of “Yessss your class is winning the good behavior competition between the 3rd grade classes! One step closer to free choice day in music!” we can try “I think our class rondo sounds even more expressive after today’s class! Let’s compare the audio I just recorded with what I recorded three classes ago and see what we think. After you listen, talk to your shoulder partner about what we can do next.”

Foster Collaboration and Community (8.3)

Our classrooms aren’t isolated contexts. Elementary music students have a lot to learn from each other, and it’s important that they leave our classrooms able to listen and collaborate with other people.

Create cooperative learning groups with clear goals, roles, and responsibilities:

In an active music classroom, information is shared from teacher to student, student to teacher, student to student, and students to community. This is an important part of deemphasizing the teacher as the source of all musical knowledge, and reframing the teacher’s role to the musical guide while the students construct their own knowledge. Students can work in small groups to figure out how to play a melodic pattern on barred instruments by ear. They could create a group ostinato. They could brainstorm ideas for a B section. They could discuss the meaning of the text in a song, book, or story.

Create expectations for group work:

Like us, young musicians can have conflict when working in groups. What are the expectations for listening to ideas? What are the expectations for trying those ideas? Creating rubrics or checklists for students to work toward in small groups can be helpful to establish boundaries and goals.

Increase mastery-oriented feedback (8.4)

Musical skills are built, not born. Despite the wide-spread myths around innate talent and creativity, our students become better musicians when they are motivated to thoughtfully practice over time. All of us are motivated to keep learning when we feel we’re making progress. One of the teacher’s jobs in the UDL classroom is to help students approach challenges through mastery-oriented feedback.

Provide feedback that encourages perseverance, focuses on development of efficacy and self-awareness, and encourages the use of specific supports and strategies in the face of challenge:

When students encounter challenges to things like pitch matching, we can give them specific supports such as vocal sirens, inner hearing the melodic contour while moving, or singing with a friend. Instead of “Grace, you have such a beautiful voice!” we can try “Grace, did you hear how your voice changed after we did the sirens together?!” One implies an innate ability. One implies building skills over time through strategic support and self-awareness.

Provide feedback that models how to incorporate evaluation, including identifying patterns of errors and wrong answers, into positive strategies for future success:

Engine Engine Number Nine (Different Words).jpg

In preparation for an informance or another sharing scenario, students may be working on a whole class ensemble arrangement of (just as an example) Engine Engine Number Nine. In this arrangement example, as one group is moving like a train, one group is playing a steady beat on tubanos, and one group is playing the rhythm of the words on rhythm sticks, it’s possible to get off from the steady beat. When that happens, we can say something like “hmmmm let’s do that again and listen across the room while we perform. When we’re done, we’ll tell someone next to us what we notice.” Students perform the arrangement again, discuss with their shoulder partner, then share a few comments with the class. If steady beat matching is identified as a problem, students can brainstorm solutions that the teacher writes on the board (inner hear and pretend to play your part, play quieter, watch the other groups, etc.). Students choose their strategy, then discuss whether or not it helped the ensemble.

Listen to More:
Rhythm vs Beat Arrangement for Engine Engine Number Nine

The Takeaway:

We can create safe learning environments where students create goals, explore freedom within boundaries, and get process-oriented feedback from us.

Provide options for Self Regulation (Guideline 9)

Provide Options for Self Regulation Elementary General Music

Students differ in how engaged they are in specific tasks and how aware they are of their behavioral reactions to emotion. We can build in checks to strategically help students monitor their behavior, motivation, and engagement. The more we circle back to these internal motivation checks, the more opportunities we provide for students to be successful.

Promote expectations and beliefs that optimize motivation (9.1):

It can be challenging for some students to wrestle with their current musical skill level in comparison to where they want to be. It’s possible for students to act out of frustration when musical tasks are beyond their reach the first try.

Provide prompts, reminders, guides, rubrics, checklists that focus on elevating the frequency of self-reflection and self-reinforcements:

It can be helpful for students to have checks with group or independent work so they’re not alarmed or panicked when time is up. This idea is one I adopted from my Orff level 1 instructor, Alicia Knox. When student group or individual work time is nearing its end, the teacher plays an attention-grabber (bell, clap, chimes, etc.) and students hold up fingers for the number of minutes they still need to complete the task. The teacher scans the numbers quickly, then shares how many more minutes (if any) students will work before moving on with the lesson. When we ask students what they need, we give them an opportunity to mentally check in on their own musical progress and make an statement on what they need next.

Support activities that encourage self-reflection and identification of personal goals:

As we work on individual or group assignments like compositions, it can be helpful for students to create their own goals for independent work. When working on a composition or other extended project, students can turn their paper over and fill in the blank to two simple prompts: “Today I ___ (write what was worked on)____. Next class I will ___ (write the next steps)___.” Students can also discuss these goals with a shoulder partner before writing. This helps keep the whole class focused on the next steps.

Facilitate personal coping skills and strategies (9.2):

We all have times we feel sad, nervous, or angry in music class. Managing responses to emotions may come easier to some students than others, but there are ways we can help all students move toward managing their emotionally reactive behavior.

Provide differentiated models, scaffolds and feedback for appropriately handling subject specific phobias and judgments of “natural” aptitude:

When we feel uncomfortable, anxious, or embarrassed, it’s normal to behave in a way that helps us avoid those feelings. Often that behavior isn’t conducive to the classroom environment we want to build. For example, students might react to these feelings by throwing mallets, yelling, shutting down, using comical voices or gestures, attempting to leave the learning space, or using hurtful words. Other guidelines in this post have mentioned the importance of scaffolding musical tasks and offering choices so students are challenged appropriately. We can also help students clarify their wording from “I’m not good at music” (a thought that can trigger an unproductive emotional behavior response) to “I didn’t play the 16th notes the way I wanted this time, but what if I try with a slower tempo?” (a thought that can move toward more positive and musical behavior).

Develop self-assessment and reflection (9.3)

Offer devices, aids, or charts to assist individuals in learning to collect, chart and display data from their own behavior for the purpose of monitoring changes in those behaviors:

I taught a particular musician who found it incredibly difficult to go through class without verbal outbursts. These were harmful to the learning environment and I wanted to partner with the student to see how we could find alternative ways of expression. The first step was simply helping this musician see what I was talking about when I referred to “verbal outbursts.” We came up with a system where the musician would keep track via written talleys for the number of outbursts in the class. There was no punishment for more talleys and no reward for fewer talleys. At the end of class the musician would share their numbers with me quickly before going to baseball practice. In those conversations, we mostly talked about what the student thought about class that day, and how baseball was going. The outbursts lowered dramatically in those weeks, and my relationship with the student improved.

The Takeaway:

We can help students monitor their thoughts and behaviors by incorporating regular check-ins and opportunities for reflection.

In this post we’ve discussed many different angles for providing multiple means of engagement in Elementary General music.

Again, this is by no means an exhaustive list! The purposes just to get us thinking about some practical applications of Universal Design for Learning in elementary general music.

As teachers we are learners first. When we learn about a new framework for education we have an opportunity to try on new ideas, new philosophies, and new practices. Sometimes we also get to connect those new philosophies to actions that we’re already doing in the classroom. Most of us we are likely already implementing some of these UDL ideas, so perhaps we decide to highlight those practices moving forward. Perhaps there are some things that we could tweak just a bit to enhance the types of engagement we offer.

If you have thoughts about Universal Design for Learning or this particular pillar of multiple means of engagement I would love to hear from you. You can drop a comment below, shoot me an email, or find me on instagram.

How to Cite this Blog Post:

Boler, V. (2021, March 2). Multiple means of engagement in elementary general music (UDL in music part 2). Victoria Boler. https://victoriaboler.com/blog/udl-elementary-music-multiple-means-of-engagement