Changes to Aaron Copland Project from last year

Last year I used information that was written for middle school students, but it was clearly not accessible to my fifth graders.  I re-wrote it, so that it would be in language that my students could understand.  I also re-wrote the questions that went with the information.  These questions scaffolded better the essential question in the end, that the essay should be based on.  I introduced rubrics, like the funnel, the hamburger and the RACE model which the students were already familiar with.  They knew how to create a five paragraph essay already using these models, and they knew how to use information in a way that would not cause them to plagiarize.  They have learned how to quote from the text, and they have learned already how to back up their statements with details and quotes from the text.

Students this year have much more experience with the informative writing than they ever had before, so this work so much better than last year.  They just had not had any practice in informative writing last year and they weren't familiar with any of the rubrics or important mnemonic devices for their organization.  All of the organizational tools they are using work perfectly with my project on Aaron Copland.

I spent the first day when I was introducing the project discussing the idea of "influences".  I had students discuss the meaning of the word, and talk about the influences that a musician might have which would cause them to be successful.  Some influences might be places or situations or ideas, and some of the influences might be people.  Sometimes we need help with success, but success can never happen without essential things that we would do to help ourselves, like practice, and perseverance, and listening to our audiences.

I would check the first answers to the first nine questions, and that made a difference when the essay was going to be written.  I could make sure that all the answers were correct before they used these notes to create their essay.  I re-iterated several times the importance of solid, longer, more detailed answers to the first nine questions to make the essay that much easier to write and better for us to read.  I also re-iterated the importance of answering the original essential question, "What contributed to the success of Aaron Copland?" not just taking the answers to the questions and putting them into the essay.  Creating questions that support the final essay is also a key element in the success of the students.  This made a huge difference from last year as well.

This goes to show you that if you introduce writing in all the classes, not just ELA, it will always help students become better writers all the way around.  You can also assess the standard in music as well as have students write using the correct style and rules without taking that much away from the importance of the music standard.  I would like to not be torn in my pursuit of excellence across the curriculum, and I would like my music colleagues to understand the essential nature of writing in the discipline, not just teaching notes, rhythms and other disciplinary literacy standards.  More on this in another blog!!