The 9 Music Standards or Musical Learning to be Imparted to Students

When I was a student my teacher discussed the 7 musical learning that should be imparted to the students so that they can fully achieve a well-rounded musical child. Now that the internet is available anytime we want to use it, I thought on researching about this musical learning and encountered a page from MENC (Music Education National Conference) in America which is now called the NAfME (National Association of Music Education), that from 7 now becomes 9 musical learning and called it music standards, namely:

1. Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music
2. Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music
3. Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments
4. Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines
5. Reading and notating music
6. Listening to, analyzing, and describing music
7. Evaluating music and music performances
8. Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts
9. Understanding music in relation to history and culture

I started to revise myself with these 9 musical standards/learning. It is very important to let the students experience these so that they will appreciate music and at the same time a worthwhile experience. Music class is supposed to be a very active class. As a teacher, I can't imagine a boring music class, with all the resources which are just at your reach, it is impossible that the music class is not enjoyable. Let me state some examples for these standards:

Singing - you can let the students sing in a group like a choir, they can sing folk songs or pop songs or other forms of music depends upon your lesson. We can now search recorded music through Youtube, with or without lyrics, and with or without vocals, and also we have MP3 available for free downloading on the internet. Now, it is not a problem for those who are not so good at playing or accompanying singers with piano or other instruments because we can search them all on the internet. The web is the answer to your problem.

Performing - in school I introduced recital whether they will perform it solo, or in pairs, or in a group. A small classroom is enough to be used as a recital studio. If the students are shy to perform on stage, let them make a music video of their performance by themselves using their digital camera, video camera or even their mobile phones then save it on the computer and then you can check their performance.

Improvising - let the students improvise by themselves. For example, I let the students listen to Latin American music using Youtube then I let them improvise using the instruments, they created different rhythms for each instrument to accompany the music. Just be sure that all needed things are in your classroom and don't forget that you need to guide them always.

Composing and Arranging - you can let the students make their own compositions using music composition software. If the software is not available you can download some free trials in the meantime. If computers are not available you can let them use instruments that they know how to play and start composing or arranging. Be sure to make it simple for beginners, not the very complicated one because students will not enjoy making it, just aim for a very simple but beautiful line. Be always available for students' queries and questions because composition and arranging is not an easy thing to do at their level.

Reading and Notating - these two things are the most basic of all. The lesson of reading and notating starts from primary. Be sure to check their knowledge on this before starting the lesson because it will be very hard for them to understand the topic or lesson that you will tackle. Always review them with this before anything else. Let them sing songs and provide the hard copy of the manuscript. There are a lot of methods on how to make these topics enjoyable like using the following: Kodaly, Orff, Dalcroze, Suzuki, Carabo-Cone, and others.

Listening - this standard plays a vital role in the music lessons. I always have listening examples for students. Be sure that every time you let your students listen to music there are guide questions to answer or observe from the music. Make sure that you have given an overview of the music before starting the listening activity. Do not let the students listen to long music extract the most important part that is the best example to represent your topic. Music videos are much more interesting for students to listen to and watch at the same time like for example a recorded concert in which they have a good opportunity to watch the expressions of the performer.

Evaluating - in every activity that you're going to do in class let the students evaluate it and from that evaluation, you will have an idea of how to make your activities in the future more interesting. Please note: let the students evaluate by themselves just facilitate the evaluation process. All aspects must be from the students.

Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts - as much as possible always inject or correlate music in other arts such as dance, theatre, and visual arts, and also other subject or disciplines such as math, history, and geography, English, science, values education, PE, etc. It will make your lesson more interesting to students. They will be amazed at the strategy that you will use for this part and how they connect and relate to music.

Understanding music in relation to history and culture - in this standard I can relate with the music method of Zoltan Kodaly. It is really important that you will relate history and culture to your lesson. Sing a folk song and perform traditional music. This makes your lesson very effective and interesting. Take, for example, I am teaching in an international school that has more or less 22 nationalities. In my music lesson, I see to it that I can correlate and inject culture and history most especially in the secondary level because they are learning different music in different countries such as Asian, Latin, Western, and African music.

With these standards that I am using and basing my lessons in music, I learn a lot of things. It amazes me and makes me more motivated to make very exciting and worthy lesson plans every week for my students. My suggestion is don't stop researching, reading, browsing the web, learning from other music teachers and even non-music teachers can even help you in making a big difference in your teaching life. Enjoy!