Outcome Silhouettes

There are so many great self assessment and reflection ideas out there for classroom teachers to use with their students. I beleive reflection is an essential part of learning, but as a specialist I struggle with coming up with different ways to incorporate this into Music with only 30 minute classes!

Something that I did try this past school year was my outcome silouettes! I created these because I wanted students to understand what we were working towards in Music.

I had seven students, one from each grade, come to the Music room where we traced a body outline of each student onto bulletin board paper. We cut out each body outline and then painted the edges with black paint. There were 7 bodies in total, all different sizes and colours and each representing a different grade from Kindergarten to grade 6. I then typed up keywords for each grade from the general and specific learning outcomes of our Manitoba K-8 Music Curriculum, such as beat, cross over bordun, improvising, music of different times, etc. I printed the words, cut them and laminated them. The laminated words were glued onto the silouettes according to grade.

I posted all seven silouettes on the wall from smallest to largest, which was also from Kindergarten to grade 6. At the end of most Music classes this year I would take 2-5 minutes at the end of class to point out and discuss what we had focused on during that class. We would take a sticker, red for one class, blue for the other , and put a sticker on each outcome that we had worked on. Sometimes I would ask students what the class needed to improve on, what was challenging, what sounded really great and why, and other discussion questions.

I found the outcome silhouettes very valuable this year! Having the different grades posted on the wall was great because students could see what was to come in future years and we sometime made connections between what we were working on and what older students were doing. The silhouettes were also useful when students were waiting in line for the classroom teacher. We would fill a couple of minutes by checking out the silhouettes.

In September, I am trying the same idea of posting outcomes, but instead of having them posted in silhouettes, I have something different in mind. I will keep you posted!

-Steph