Learning Through Music

The mission of the Conservatory Lab Charter School is to engage all children by using the Learning Through Music curricular model to ensure every child's academic, artistic, creative, and social/emotional success, as validated by qualitative and quantitative measures.

A Learning Laboratory

With increasing national interest in the impact of music on children's capacity and readiness to learn, the CLCS is a special place where curriculum, best instructional practices, and assessment tools are being developed and implemented over time. A continual process of professional development involving teachers and outside specialists has resulted in the expansion of these materials while simultaneously evaluating student performance. The CLCS is in a unique position to use the results of this ground-breaking work to build a new model for reforming public schools. This is especially critical as we examine ways of closing the achievement gap typical of minority and impoverished children in inner-city schools.

We will soon begin our seventh year as a music-based charter public school. Our goal is to continue refining the Learning Through Music curriculum model in order to enhance learning across academic disciplines. As an overview, the Learning Through Music model is based on three overarching principles:

Five processes are intrinsic to learning music-listening, questioning, creating, performing and reflecting. These are applied across the school as a fundamental way for children to approach all learning. The five processes require use of kinesthetic, auditory, and visual modalities of learning. Thus, every child's preferred learning style is accessed while the weaker modalities are strengthened.

Shared fundamental concepts-the natural, authentic, and meaningful ideas that music and academic subjects share-create connections for teachers and students to explore with the goal of strengthening and enhancing student achievement. These shared concepts form the links enabling the integration of music into academic subjects.

Multiple literacies reinforce one another: learning another form of symbolic decoding-sight singing and writing music notation-helps give fluency to language literacy and numeracy. Research indicates there is a strong correlation between music literacy and improved reading and mathematic achievement.

These three fundamental principles are being used to build a strong and replicable Learning Through Music curriculum model in three important ways:

1. A Comprehensive Music Program

CLCS students are provided with the following:

Music classes every day
Weekly semi-private violin lessons and weekly small group violin lessons (grades 1-5)
Numerous performance opportunities throughout the year

Unlike most public schools where students attend music classes infrequently, students at the CLCS have a 45-minute music class each day. These classes are used to build musical literacy through work on singing, solfège, recorder, music reading, and rhythm/pitch studies. Application of musical knowledge is applied to the recorder, Orff percussive instruments, and computer notation programs.

Starting in first grade, students study the violin in semi-private lessons and in small group classes. Every child is provided with a violin, free of charge, by the school. The use of a technically difficult instrument provides the opportunity for extensive musical learning as well as social/emotional development as students learn to perform in groups, to practice and to control their bodies in the complex ways needed to be successful. Through their violin studies, children learn self-discipline (they are required to practice the violin at home each night), and gain a sense of community (they interact regularly in group lessons and group performances).

The students perform frequently throughout the academic year. Weekly assemblies showcase student achievement, and provide teachers and students with the opportunity to share what they have learned in their Learning Through Music activities. In addition, students perform in winter and spring concerts held at the school or at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall.

2. Academic Enhancement Lessons (AELs) and Thematic Interdisciplinary Projects (TIPs)

Classroom and music teachers collaboratively implement Learning Through Music lessons (Academic Enhancement Lessons) that explore and experiment with the many ways that music stimulates and increases learning. These lessons feature concepts that are shared between music and academic subjects.

Sample interdisciplinary Learning Through Music lessons and units:

Math and music: Students learn addition and subtraction in math class, and then compare rhythmic patterns in four-beat musical phrases to count the number of sounds per pattern. Next, the students vary the patterns, either by adding or taking away sounds.

Language arts and music: Students identify character and plot development in short stories they have read. In related music classes, they sing and learn about ballads-stories that are sung. Next, the students identify character and plot development within the ballads, and compare them with those found in the short stories. Students use this knowledge to create their own stories, poems, or songs.

Science and music: Students classify the various plants they have been studying and then create their own classification scheme for various types of folk, classical, jazz, and popular musical idioms.

Social studies and music: Students enliven the study of the American Revolution by learning and singing songs of the period. They also create their own lyrics for well-known revolutionary songs such as "Yankee Doodle" that describe the facts of history they have studied.

Music and classroom teachers co-plan and co-teach their lessons, providing a cohesive context for the students' studies across the curriculum. This integration of subjects engages student interest by providing depth of analysis, and it amplifies student understanding by making important connections between disciplines. Using the Massachusetts Frameworks as a base, all teachers at the CLCS develop Thematic Interdisciplinary Projects that bring together a social studies topic with music, and may also include science and math. For example, the third grade class studied the Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts in social studies. Students listened to and sang Native American lullabies and composed their own lullaby in music class. As a group, the students wrote the lyrics and music, and played and sang the lullaby at a special performance. To engage students in a science and math project, the second grade teacher used recorders and flutes of different lengths. The students measured and played the instruments, and then discussed the relationship between an instrument's length and the range of pitches it can produce.

3. Music Listening Program

Research suggests that music can be a powerful tool for social/emotional development
Students listen to music daily
Students select the music that they listen to for specific purposes and discuss the appropriateness of their choices

Teachers have experimented with a variety of ways to use music listening at the CLCS. Music during transitional times in classrooms has been used effectively to help students move from one task to another. Students listen to the music and then write reflections on what they have heard. With listening as one of the five processes at the core of the school, this program will continue to expand and be evaluated for its effectiveness.