I’m sure you all know it, you all hated it and many of you even lied over it…..the dreaded PRACTICE RECORD. You likely heard your music teachers try to explain its purpose, telling you that practice makes perfect, but actually perhaps those music teachers were the ones that were not completely being honest the importance of practice records.
In my post, A Disappearing Act for Technology I spoke about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule. On the surface it would seem that his 10,000 hour rule for mastery of an instrument would support the idea of practice makes perfect, but after spending quite some time listening to some students who seem to do quite a bit of practice I have also known that practicing doesn’t always turn out with the same result. Most often students who practice end up “doing time” rather than listening, evaluating and purposefully selecting things to practice – and the “doing time” was not always helping students to improve in their playing. Most teachers including our band team have always given the students a grade for their practice. The grade was derived from rubrics and considered areas like the record keeping necessary in maintaining a practice record, but MOSTLY it the grade was determined by the number of minutes that the students practiced (or said that they had practiced.) Since students didn’t know how to practice we did dedicate time to teaching band students how to practice and designed many activities within our curriculum that helped them to “practice” evaluating their own and others’ performances – the hope being that one day evaluating their own playing would become habit and that this quality would help them to make their practice more purposeful.
Trouble is that despite some determined teaching and curriculum interventions, it still appeared that the number of students who were completing purposeful practice that led to major improvements and accomplishments in their playing, was really not increasing by a large number. Another problem was that some students really hated going online and filling in a practice record with the number of minutes that they practiced and there was a disconnect between the chart and the work that they had accomplished – some of them hating it so much and knowing that it was not important to them – that they just didn’t complete it. And then there was the huge problem of grading. What a pointless task we had in spending time to grade hundreds of weekly practice records that showed the number of minutes that the students said they had practiced – it was busy work for all of us and although we didn’t admit it to the students – the teachers hated the practice records just as much as the students.
So why did we do it – Tradition – what band classes have you heard of that didn’t have practice records? But enough was enough. What other subject do you know of that gives a grade for the amount of time that it took to complete their homework? And isn’t homework and opportunity to practice skills and knowledge from a course’s curriculum. Fortunately my team supported me when I told them I wanted nothing to do with practice records anymore, and since that time I have worked on developing an electric practice portfolio system for showing progress rather than time. I was having difficulties with the final stages of the implementation until I thought more about the ideas of mastery learning, flipping and objective based learning tasks. Inspired by Brian Bennett and his flipped classroom presentation, I started thinking even more about the busy work we had been assigning and grading, the lack of flexibility in our practice requirement and how our practice records could be flipped.
Which brings me to my project idea: The transformation of a graded practice chart system – to the evolution of an electronic practice portfolio that empowers students with choice, knowledge of playing objectives and a system for sharing the improvements and accomplishments that are products of purposeful practice.
What would that look like? Although it continues to evolve and develop so far it has started on their personal band website that they share with their band teacher. We have already established a system of using websites to collect and maintain work – using Google Sites – each student shares a band site with their 2 band teachers. In this site in the section where we used to have the practice chart we now have a practice portfolio section. Each quarter has an embedded google doc that gives students objectives, required items for submission and a file drop box section that allows students to file pre-recordings and final recordings of their practice. Now they will be graded for showing improvement and process in their practice. Some of the products will also be used for the playing-grade evaluation, with students selecting items that they would like to have evaluated and teachers choosing for some of these items to be evaluated as live and electronic playing quiz items. Here’s a little taster of where I’m starting from:
For a long time now, we have used SmartMusic in the 6th grade band program, but this year we are using it in grades 6, 7 and 8. The implementation of a practice portfolio together with this change allows an even bigger opportunity for change and together with the electronic practice portfolio system I hope to develop a more creative and effective program for my students to practice. My project will concentrate on further developing, innovating and implementing the practice portfolio, integrating SmartMusic within that practice system and finally developing a selection of vodcasts that are available to students for the use of the technology tools that we use in music.
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