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Preparing Music Educators to Work with Special Needs Students —
Cynthia Colwell

Mouse-over a link for a summary; click a link for more details.

Background

For this project, I redesigned Exceptional Child in Music Education (MEMT 407), a course that focuses on music educators working with special needs students. Although I am passionate about this subject matter, after offering the course three times I felt that I did not adequately balance two essential areas: 1) characteristics of different categories of disabilities, and 2) methods for adapting and integrating students with disabilities into the music classroom or music ensemble. In redesigning the course, I wanted to find how to better manage my classroom time while addressing both the key areas listed above.

In addition, I wanted to rethink ways of assessing students’ learning. I have found that assessment in this class is a challenge because much of the information is abstract since we are talking about possible scenarios. Although I feel that I can adequately assess knowledge of disability characteristics, I wanted to focus on how to address students' ability to adapt their lesson planning for these children/youth. I also wanted to better facilitate theoretical discussions of “if you had a child with a particular disability and given context, what would you do?” and provide students with more background knowledge to help them better adapt for different scenarios. This would also further help students to successfully implement appropriate curriculum for students with special needs.

| Implementation

Implementation

Planned implementation for this course for the Fall 2006 semester included using a new textbook and creating PowerPoint presentations expanding on it, developing a flowchart of special education reform, having students write briefly about each disability, adding readings from my online version of this course (MEMT 791), revising the Adapted Curricula Project, and improving assessment by using rubrics.

Actual implementation for the Fall 2006 semester included the following:

Inclusion of a new textbook that included eliminating chapter quizzes and substituting three tests.
Creating PowerPoint presentations that addressed and expanded on textbook information.
Creating a flowchart (sequential PowerPoint as well as student template) for historical understanding of special education reform.

I partially revised the Adapted Curricula Project but realized students needed more direction with it. I created an initial rubric for the In-service Project but not the Adapted Curricula Project, because I am still revising the project.

| Student Performance

Student Performance

Examples of assignments from across the semester illustrate students’ understanding of course topics:

Adapted materials where students were asked to adapt a piece of music, musical instrument, or other material used in teaching in a music setting for a student of their choice who has special needs.
In-service Projects where students were asked to present an in-service to K-12 music colleagues in their school district. They were asked to choose a specific disability or group of similar disabilities. Examples of one-page handouts or slides from PowerPoint presentations are included.
Adapted Curricula Projects where students were asked to create a series of lesson plans toward a targeted goal; i.e., performance of a musical composition at the secondary level or a musical concept at the elementary/general music level. After students completed the unit of lesson plans, they were told that they had two students with disabilities who were going to be included in their music setting. They were asked to adapt the lessons for appropriate educational and social inclusion of these students. Students worked in small groups and created a written document and did a presentation that included some type of music presentation.

| Reflections

Reflections

An opportunity to reflect is probably one of the most exciting components of this portfolio for me personally. Although I felt much more successful about this course during the Fall 2006, I now have many more aspects I want to change in subsequent offerings. My feelings of success are unfortunately not necessarily in the primary targeted area but having adjusted some of the peripheral information and assignments, I now feel more prepared to revise the Adapted Curricula Project, the culminating experience for the class. Although I did implement many revisions, I now have further aspects I wish to adjust as well as additional ones to enhance the course.

| Summary

Project Summary

After a course redesign, students were more engaged in class discussions, made more confident statements about their ability to teach children with special needs, and were better able to adapt lesson plans to incorporate children with special needs in the music setting.

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