Pg 213 & 214 #1, 3 & 5

1. I do agree that children's creative ability should not be assessed. The only time I would possibly need to assess is if there were guidlines that children were to adhere to in the assignment, and even then, I feel if the children did diverge, I most likely would allow that, assuming it helped their creaitve process along. In that case, though, I wouldn't really be asessing their creaitvity as much as their ability to do what the teacher asked.

3. I would defne musical creativity as the Manhattanville Music Curriculum Program did, saying "Creativity in music...refers to activities in which the pupil uses aural imagination, aural insights, and aural judgement to fashion sounds into music." I do not believe that the actual skill of being creative is important to my philosophy, but giving children the opportunities to explore and be creative in a safe environment is.

5. Improvisation would be the primary musical creative area I would feel most comfortable teaching an assessing. This is because it is the area, in my opinion, that allows children to have the most guided freedom. For example, the class might be doing a song in ABA form, where the B section in an improvised accompaniment on a barred Orff instrument. In order to guide them, I may have taken off certain bars so the melody sounds right, and I might give them the instruction to use rhythms of du and du de any way they want to, and I might tell them to end on Do. After writing all that, it seems like a lot of guidance, but as an example, I could give those guidelines, and then th children could do anything else within that frame. And, as I said in the asnwer to question 1, if the child did go outside the guidlines, I would probably be more happy for them since they took their imporvisation into their own hands rather than being upset that they did not follow directions.

Although the Orzolek article was all about tha paradox that of assessment, it seemed that Orzolek was contradicting himself. What I understood of the article is that assessment in music can and should be actually based on something to show that learning has occurred. So when he talked about the teachers who based their means of assessment on awards and trophies and good concerts, that isn't really substantial at all. The children involved may already be really good at what they do, so winning awards and performing good concerts comes more natually, so learning most likely hasn't occurred, and therefore is a poor basis for assessment. But on the other extreme, having assessment being very regimented and standardized to provide data for everyone involved but the student isn't helpful either. The student needs to be at the center of assessment so the information gathered from the assessment can be used to help the student inprove. Granted that I understoon the article correctly, I agree with Orzolek. Especially in comparison to Brophy, who's text seems very geared towards how to grade students and not how to assess as a means to improve the students.

Page 143 #3

Real simple ways that technology can help in assessing in musical performances is just by using recording devices. Simply by using either video or voice recorders, a teacher is able to focus on the class in the moment, and go back to watch or listen afterwards to discover if the children were meeting their assessment criterion. I do not think that the mere presence of technological decives in the general music classroom threatens the authenticity of assessment. Just because it is there does not mean that the teacher needs to or has to use the technology every moment of every lesson. So really, it comes down to the teacher and what they're capable of. Like with my example of recording the children, that is probably as much technology as I think I personally could handle in the classroom for assessment purposes, but another teacher may be very capable of integrating more into their means of assesing,

Page 85-86 #3&9

3. I do think that improvisation should be included in the "musical skills" learning area. Not as a means to have another skill to grade and determine whether the child is musical or not, but more as a means to give children another musical experience. The teacher should start of slow with improvisation parameters so the children can feel successful when they can improvise, and then widen the parameters as they become more and more comfortable and successful.

9. Its fine to have some sort of standardized music test as a part of an overall assessment program but most certainly not the foremost used assessment tool. But yes, it is perfectly alright to include a test into the forms of assessment.