Kaitlyn Laprise

3/17/16
Materials Comparison Paper 1
In an attempt to evaluate textbooks intended to be used to teach music
theory to High School students, I examined two books: the first edition of The Band
Directors Curriculum Resource by Erickson and the second edition of The Music
Kit by Manoff. The stated purpose of Ericksons book is to help junior and senior
high school band directors who, though busy preparing ensembles for performance,
want to teach their students about music as well as how to play music. (p. iii) The
primary objective of the book is to provide teachers with lesson plans which include
sequenced instruction of fundamentals and activities for students to apply new
concepts in order to improve students overall musicianship and thereby enrich
students lives through aesthetic experiences. It includes six units of studylinear
pitch, vertical pitch, acoustics, form, style, and durationand presents each unit as
a set of sequenced concepts before applying them to band literature. Each unit
includes a vocabulary list, set of lesson plans, activities and worksheets for students
to apply new knowledge, and a unit quiz. It also includes several appendices which
provide extra activities for each content area as well as repertoire lists of
transcriptions of music from each style period that is addressed in the book so that
students can perform the music they are studying. Erickson designed each of the
units to be independent of the other five so that teachers can choose which units
they want to use in their classroom without having to use the entire book every
year. In contrast, the Manoff, which is intended for use in any music classroom, has
organized the content into chapters which build upon the concepts of previous

chapters. There are three components to this book: the workbook, the rhythm
reader, and the scorebook, all of which are related by chapters so that students can
work in the same chapter of all three books at the same time. The work book
addresses all of the elements of fundamentals that Rogers emphasizes as well as
several other topics including pitch, scales, key signatures, intervals, harmony,
triads, accompaniment, and modes. Rhythm is addressed only in the rhythm reader,
which was not examined as part of this evaluation. Each chapter involves the
students in performing the new concepts either on keyboard or guitar. While some
of the content in these two textbooks is very similar, they differ most in terms of
their pacing, scope, and intended classroom audience.
In principle, the idea of incorporating the Erickson into an instrumental
curriculum in order to give students a more comprehensive music education is an
important goal. Unfortunately, because the scope of the book is so large, the
content is limited to mostly description of the fundamental elements of music that
Rogers emphasizes, and includes very few opportunities for true analysis. In terms
of pedagogical approach, the scaffolding which Rogers discusses is clearly evident
in the organization of each unit which starts from the most basic form of a concept
and gradually builds to more complexity throughout the unit in logical steps. Their
inclusion of concept statements, which are what the author believes to be the
most concise way to present musical facts, fit strongly with Rogerss idea of being
as simple as possible and as thorough as necessary. Each lesson plan includes
opportunities for group work and worksheets that ask students to apply knowledge,
which speak to the active participation that Rogers calls for in classrooms, and there
is a strong emphasis present in the book on assimilating singing and playing with
reading and understanding, which is stressed by both White and Karpinski. The

inherent pacing of the book is ineffective; by dividing the book into units of lesson
plans, Erickson has implied that the same amount of time should be spent on every
lesson despite major differences in the amount and complexity of content from
lesson to lesson. For example, there are some very involved units like the style unit
which devotes only one lesson plan to cover all of the information for each time
period in history, and the duration lesson which introduces every note value from
whole note to 32nd note in one lesson plan. In contrast, the relatively small concepts
of the intervallic patterns of major scales and note reading in treble and bass clef
each get their own lesson plan. Generally speaking, the lessons increase in
complexity as you progress through the unit, so the appropriate pacing would be
gradually slower with each lesson plan. Ultimately, the concepts seem to be
sequenced very well and in the correct order, so the teachers discretion can be
used to inform the pacing within the lessons themselves.
In terms of overall effectiveness, the Erickson seems like it could be a very
useful tool for a band director because it gives teachers all the information that they
need to implement this information into their curriculum. The only negative that I
see to the content included in the book is that a few of the worksheets are much
more complicated than what would be necessary to assess a students
understanding of the concept. Having said that, most of the worksheets seem to be
appropriately leveled and the lessons that have unusable worksheets still include
lesson plans, concept statements, activities, and scaffolding of concepts which are
still very useful. It would be simple for the teacher to replace just the worksheet
with something more appropriate for their group of students. In that respect, the
effectiveness of this book depends largely on how it is used by the teacher. If the
teacher intends to use one lesson plan per day and move through the entire text

book every year with their students, both the pacing and scope of this book will be
ineffective and will likely lead to very little deep understanding or retention for the
students. However, this book is intended to be used as a curriculum guide, which
therefore may mean that the units themselves are intended to be addressed in a
cyclical fashion over the course of a four-year high school band curriculum.
Therefore, if the teacher views these lesson plans as outlines for how to teach the
necessary elements of a concept and adjusts the pacing of each plan to fit with the
amount and complexity of content covered in the lesson, the curriculum presented
in this book could be a very effective and valuable addition to an instrumental
classroom. As Rogers mentions, in order for teachers to teach truly comprehensive
musicianship to their students, teachers need to be better and more prepared and
students need to be more engaged in learning. This book helps significantly with
that preparation for teachers and, while a textbook on its own cannot motivate an
entire classroom of students, hopefully the students will recognize and be motivated
by the increase in their own musicianship through study of the concepts in this
book.
The Manoff, in contrast, seems to be specifically designed to be covered in a
single curricular cycle of a general music or theory classroom. Its scope is more
narrowit does not include any historical or stylistic information or any discussion
of acousticsbut it does involve slightly more creativity in that it gives a few
opportunities for harmonizing and composing melodies in simple forms. While these
opportunities are not as extensive as they could be, it is more creatively involved
than the Erickson. Every chapter of the Manoff explores all elements of a new
concept which are scaffolded well, and then asks students to apply the concept to
performance on either keyboard or guitar. Each chapter also includes some element

of fundamentals as well as some slightly more advanced study such as form,

phrasing, or motives. The idea of integrating these concepts throughout the book is
important because it allows students to address higher level musical ideas
throughout their learning; however, the topics often arent related to the other
information in the chapter, which makes the organization of the book somewhat
strange. One of the strengths of this book is that every chapter has singing and
rhythmic exercises related to the new concepts in the scorebook and rhythm reader,
which allows for practice and using real musical examples in their learning, which is
important to Karpinski. Students are consistently asked in this book to apply their
new knowledge either to performing, writing, or identifying the concept within a
musical example. The pacing of this book is structured more evenly than the
Erickson except for a few small things like including double sharps in the
introduction to accidentals and including transposition in the introduction to key
signatures. There are very few real musical examples in the workbook itself, which
Karpinski would disagree with, but Manoff does refer to musical examples which he
included in the score book. The strongest element in this book by far is the
emphasis it puts on applying new knowledge to performing on keyboard and guitar.
This philosophical choice makes this book stand out from several other theory books
that I have encountered because it allows for students who arent necessarily
involved in a performance-based music course to have musical experiences.
Because of the nature of these two books being designed for use in two very
different settings, it is difficult to compare them to one another in terms of their
effectiveness. Both books involve some element of performance which is essential
to any music curriculum. The Manoff, as mentioned, uses keyboard and guitar; the
Erickson is designed for use in an instrumental classroom and includes specific

activities for various concepts involving students playing their instruments, so the
performance application is not only inherent but is also actively and intentionally
used to apply new knowledge. The Erickson is certainly more thorough and closer to
being fully comprehensive, but, because it is meant to be only one part of an entire
instrumental curriculum, it would need to be implemented over the course of a
several years in order for all of the information to be fully understood and retained
by the students. The Manoff, on the other hand, is much less extensive and is
lacking in some elements of comprehensive music study, but is attainable in a
single curricular cycle. The biggest criticism I have for both books is that neither
gives enough attention to expression, aesthetics, or creativity which are arguably
the most important parts of a students music education. I do, however, believe that
either book, if supplemented with materials to fulfill these missing elements, could
be used effectively in the classroom setting it is designed for.