Teaching Band

Grading Band Students - Music/Playing/Performance requirements

50% of a student's grade in my band class is based on their musicianship requirements.  For the most part, this is based on a series of "musicianship tests" that I give them.  I have a total of 15 levels of musicianship tests.  Students are required to work on one for each 9 weeks (4 in 6th grade, 4 in 7th grade, and 4 in 8th grade); there are a few extra for the kids who work ahead of the class.  Most levels have about 10 requirements on them, and each requirement is pass/fail.

I try to avoid giving grades for each requirement which is why I use pass/fail:  if they play it correctly they receive full credit.  They can try each requirement as many times as they like, but they do not receive any credit unless it is 100% correct.  I give 10 points per requirement, so if they only pass 7 of them, they 70 points out of a possible 100 for 50% of their grade.

What I like most about using this system, is that students can work ahead.  Right now, my 7th grade students are working on Level 5, but several have finished that already, and have started working on the next level.  I have a series of incentives and awards they can receive for working ahead.  Chair placement is based on their requirements and what level they are on.  This makes chair placement fair (at least I think so!) and very easy to explain to parents.  As a matter of fact, since I started this, I have never had a parent or student complain about their chair placement!

Playing requirements are 50% of their grade because it is the emphasis of my class.  I have a very hard time giving credit for concert attendance or participation because while it is important, the student grade should reflect what they are learning in class.  The remaining 50% of their grade is based on other criteria - which was outlined in my last post, and I will talk more about that later...

How do you grade your students?  How do you weight your grades?  

Grading Band Students

With the beginning of the school year here, I have been giving a lot of thought to my goals and objectives for the year, and more specifically, how I will assess and grade my students to meet these goals and objectives.  I really believe the effective assessment is one of the most powerful tools we have, and if used correctly, can provide a great deal of feedback for the student and parent.  Last year I wrote about this as well:

http://www.teachingband.com/2008/09/making-the-grad.html

Here is the breakdown of a student's grade in my band class:

Musicianship, 50% - Student performance on his/her instruments makes up half of the class grade. Of course, this should be made up of varying assessments/tests.

Concerts, 20% - This includes student preparation and performance of music, not just attendance.

Projects, 11% - This includes musical projects, directly related to the state or national standards for music. By making it 11%, students will lose one full letter grade if they do not complete this. This insures that the standards are included.

Written Assignments/Quizzes, 10% - This is a "catch-all" for any musical written assignments or quizzes. This can include vocabulary quizzes, theory assignments, etc...

Preparation, 9% - This is everything non-musical: coming to class prepared, having materials, turning in parent signature. A few years ago this may have been called the p-word (participation), but that word is being looked down on more and more. 9% is helps insure that this is the least significant portion of the grade.

I outlined why I weight my grade this way in that previous post - Musicianship gets 50% because as much of the grade as possible should be based on the student's individual progress.  Preparation, which I used to call participation is 9%, because it should be less than a letter grade (in my opinion).  Projects are 11% because I use that category to make sure I cover our state standards (I will post something about that later).

I used to give more weight to participation and concert attendance, but I was finding the grade was more about what they were showing up to then what they actually learned in my class.  I will and post how I grade each category soon...

How do you calculate your students' grade??  Please share in the comments section - Thanks!

New Scales Sheets Added

Two-Octave Scale sheets have been added to the scale sheets page.  These are for 7 major scales.  Scale sheets for the 12 major scales will be added soon.

Click on "Free Scale Sheets."