Princeton High School Music Theory Class, March 25, 2016

     After the final junior varsity choir rehearsal, I was back into the music theory class. They began by reviewing their homework, in which they had to add the alto and tenor parts and four part score and analyze with roman numerals underneath. It was in a major key and had no inversions for the roman numerals. Mr. Crawford checked their homework for completion and then went around the room and for every new chord, asked a different student what the notes were in the chord, which note they doubled, and what they had for the roman numeral analysis. After reviewing the homework, Mr. Crawford then introduced the concept of first and second inversion triads and the rules for doubling notes in regards to each of those chords. It was quite a confusing topic for the students to grasp, so they did multiple exercises as a class discussing first only first inversion triads and then second inversion triads. They also discussed how to notate them as roman numerals and why the numbers are the way that they are. Even though the students were confused and not grasping the concept right away, they were relaxed because they knew that Mr. Crawford would be patient with them and wait to move on until they understood.

     I think that grading music theory homework based on completion and effort is a good way to assess how the students are doing because being such a difficult concept that only gets harder as you go, it would be unfair to mark students down for something completely new that they are trying to learn. If I was teaching that class, again I would do more examples on the board because visual comprehension would explain a lot of the confusing concepts that are portrayed by orally explaining the theory. I do like the moving at the pace of the class though because it didn’t overwhelm the students so they were actually making a valiant effort to understand what was going on, especially because they knew Mr. Crawford would stop class to help them.