Working Towards Meeting the American National Standards, Part I

The American National Standards for Music Education are part of the Goals 2000 legislative act, which began to be developed in 1994. This act was developed "to improve learning and teaching by providing a national framework for education reform; to promote the research, consensus building, and systemic changes needed to ensure equitable educational opportunities and high levels of educational achievement for all students; to provide a framework for reauthorization of all Federal education programs; to promote the development and adoption of a voluntary national system of skill standards and certifications; and for other purposes."

I will running a series throughout the summer on specific standards for music, and how to develop plans to use these in your classrooms, no matter at which grade level you teach.

The thought of National Standards (and in Missouri's case, state assessment in music!) can often send teachers into a panic. All of this??? This is for the superhuman, never-leaves-the-school teacher! Please keep in mind that these standards are GOALS - the ideal situation and the ideal dream, that we should all strive to obtain to the best of our abilities, given our particular circumstances. Hopefully, none of you nor none of your administrators will beat you on the head if you can't achieve these the first or even second year! But, with some careful planning, you'll find out that you might accidentally teach two or three objectives at one blow without even realizing it!

The standard I would like to start with today is: Standard 1, grades K-4, singing alone or with a group of others, a varied repertoire of music. Actually, this is probably the easiest. I would venture a guess that most music teachers do almost more singing than anything, and that most music teachers have a fairly new music series. The music series now are geared toward meeting the standards, so you have one resource right at your fingertips!

The first part of the standard is to get kids to sing independently on pitch. With the younger kids, there are several echo-type songs aimed at working for on-key singing and pitch match. With my K-2, I use a song from the book "One, Two, Three, Echo Me," called the Echo Roll Call, and I use this at the beginning of just about every session. It's a simple so-mi pattern, with me singing "Calling Joey," and Joey answering "Here I am." Use the Curwin hand signs before you ever explain to them what they are, and the kids will follow. It's really no big deal if you let the kindergarteners speak the response for the first quarter. However, in the first quarter, those who sing should be noted. These might develop into your braver and bolder performers later!

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