TEACHING MUSIC

LISTENING SKILLS
How Low CAN You Go?
by Kimberly Burns
hose of us who teach gen- words, the information is stored In-depth processing may be
eral music are continually more firmly in long-term memory approached in three distinct ways.
faced with the challenge and becomes part of our working First, it may involve students'
of making music class schema of knowledge. Similar to written response to questions that
more meaningful for our Bloom's taxonomy, "levels of pro- contain interrogative pronouns
students. We spend a great deal of cessing" involves higher-order such as "what" and "why." These
time planning for an effective pre- thinking skills; however, it also types of questions challenge stu-
sentation, but too often we find goes beyond higher-order think- dents to think deeper and find
that by the end of the day our ing skills and uses direct applica- possible meanings that cannot be
students can't remember the title tion of these skills to create mean- found with surface-level question-
of the piece that they listened to ing and relationship in our learn- ing. Second, in-depth processing
or anything about an element or ing situations, thus forcing pro- may be achieved through the use
characteristic of music that we cessing continually at deeper and of elaboration. Elaboration is a
strived so hard to point out in our lower levels. Figure 1 is an illus- process in which the learner draws
energetic presentation. The good tration for teaching activities that inferences from new information
news is that there is a way for us encourage deeper levels of pro- and adds a personal connection or
to add meaning and depth to the cessing information. meaning to what exists. For the
music learning process, which will
help our students remember our
Surface-Level Labeling and repeating generating
lessons more effectively. To
Processing factual recall information sentences
achieve this, we must ground our
music lessons in a theory known
as "levels of processing." making oral response summarizing
"Levels of processing" is actual- generalizations to questions material
ly a theory of human memory
that was identified by Craik and
written drawing demonstrating
Lockhart in 1972. Basically, the
response relationships reasoning
theory states that when informa-
tion is processed at deeper levels,
the learners not only retain it bet- self- interpretation semantically
ter but the information is also evaluation/ and elaboration processing/
made more meaningful. In other Deeper-Level
making of new finding new
Processing
connections information meanIng

Kimberly Burns is a doctoral candidate in music

education at the University ofArizona. Figure 1. Teaching activities for different levels of processing.

SPRING 1995 31

learner, the elaborated informa-
tion is made more complete and
memorable. Third, by processing
the new information semantically,
learners attend to the underlying
meaning of the new material,
draw relationships between the
previously known and the new,
and thus allow for processing at
deeper levels. Retrieval of new
information is therefore more
accessible and the new informa-
tion has more meaning.
How, then, is the theory of
"levels of processing" directly
32
applied to our music classrooms?
The answer lies in the way in
which we ask our students to
process the information that we
give them and in the manner in
which they respond to our presen-
tation. It is not enough to merely
facilitate oral response from our
learners; we also have to include
more writing activities in our
music lessons. Writing, currently
being advocated to extend across
the curriculum, allows students to
process information deeper
through responding to questions,
GENERAL
using elaboration, and processing
the material semantically.
Two specific music listening
lessons with activities that encour-
age deeper levels of processing for
students are in the sidebars. The
lessons are designed for use at the
fifth-grade level.
As illustrated in the sample
lessons, students are guided to
deeper levels of processing new
information through activities
that challenge their thinking. For
example, questions that ask stu-
dents to create a mental image for
themselves as they listen, or
describe how the music makes
them feel, involve them in the
process of elaboration. Students
engaged in activities that encour-
age them to find connections in
the music to something they've
heard before are processing
semantically. The mere articula-
tion of similarities and differences
to something that they already
know allows the students to think
more deeply about new material'.
The probing questions-such as
why, what, and how-invite the
learners to draw conclusions, self-
evaluate, and make connections
with different aspects of the infor-
mation.
As we strive to create meaning-
ful music experiences and depth
of thinking for our learners, we
must provide them with activities
that allow them to process infor-
mation at the deepest levels of
learning. It is there that our stu-
dents have the best chance to
remember what we have to share
with them and gain meaningful
insights and connections in
music. How low can you go when
teaching music listening skills?
According to the theory of levels
of processing, where students are
encouraged to elaborate, respond
to questions, and process informa-
tion semantically, the lower the
better.
MUSIC TODAY