Tools to help make assessment and learning fun !
A BRIEF LOOK INTO HOW USING ONLINE SOFTWARE CAN BENEFIT YOUR TEACHING …
By Rebecca Mallory , District 5
Are you looking for an easy way to generate sight reading exercises for your instrumental or choral students ? Are you looking for a way to easily assess their ability to sight read music notation , solfege or rhythms ? Are you wishing you could easily keep records of all of your student ’ s recordings and give them feedback at the same time ? Sight Reading Factory ( sightreadingfactory . com ) does all of this and more , and is also very inexpensive . If you haven ’ t heard about it , I encourage you to check it out !
My school has allowed me to pilot the use of this online software with my choral students and next year , I hope to use it with my instrumentalists as well . Since our students all have devices through MLTI , this tool is very useful for having students record singing , playing or clapping musical examples . Sight Reading Factory generates excerpts that reflect the tempo , meter , difficulty , notation and solfege customized by the teacher . Teachers generate classes and assignments , then students enroll with a code and have fun learning and practicing their skills . In addition , it allows students to generate their own practice examples .
I thought introducing this software would be met with some grumbling from my students , but they enjoy the challenge and appreciate the learning that comes from it . The fact that they have the option to attempt the examples multiple times also helps take some performance pressure off . Students submit their best example and it takes very little time to grade them and offer feedback . With large or small class sizes , we all