ARTS EDUCATION TEACHER HANDBOOK

MIDDLE SCHOOL ASSESSMENT ITEMS

Submitted by Cynthia L Campbell, Cumberland County Schools

Title:
Using Pitch Numbers to Teach a Major Scale

Grade Level or Course:
Grades 6, 7, 8 Choral Music

Targeted Goals and Objectives from the 2000 North Carolina Arts Education Standard Course
of Study and Grade Level Competencies, K - 12:

From 6th Grade SCS, could be adapted for 7th and 8th grades:

• 5.03: Sightread simple melodic notation in the treble clef.

Link with other subjects:

N/A

Type of Assessment:
_ Diagnostic
x Monitoring
x Summative

Type of Item:
_ Selected Response
x Written Response
x Performance
x Conversation
x Observation

Assessment Item:

The learner will be able to recognize the sound of and sing the major scale by singing it with numbers/pitch levels. The teaching of the major scale gives students a process by which to learn simple sight-reading passages for the purpose of sight-reading for adjudication at local and state choral festivals.

Oral assessment may be given by the teacher doing finger exercises of stepwise and later movement by skips within the notes of the major scale. The class could also be divided into small groups.

This would later move to oral assessment of simple sight-reading exercises that the teacher writes on the board. Again large and small groups could be assessed orally.

For a unit test, the teacher could device simple sight-reading exercises and have individual students write in pitch numbers. These exercises could also be taken from a sight-reading method book. The teacher would need to designate which note is "1" in each exercise. The exercises could then be sung aloud in large and small groups, or individually.

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