Throughout the school year, different sets of data are gathered from my middle school music classes and shared back with my students. Data such as instrument checkouts, intonation assessments, music theory assessments, and performance assessments. The data helps drive my instruction; what concepts need to be revisited? Which students need help with a particular skill or concept? In this example, my advanced students perform musical exercises on their instruments throughout the school year and are graded using a 5-point rubric by their class peers and myself. Resulting data gets added to my data model in a Power Bi desktop file, gets anonymized, and is shared back to my students through a public Power Bi report (see page 4 & 6). Students analyze their personal feedback data using math to find averages and make comparisons with their grade level peers, instrument section, and overall class scores. Students write/answer reflection questions on the story told in their data; what musical performance skill needs improvement?
Students are then tasked to research that particular musical skill for their instrument and work in collaborative groups to present their findings to the entire class.
This year long project is designed to utilize available assessment data to support ELA and Math standards, build research skills, and utilize collaborative project-based learning.
