Zac E. and Sarah H., Writing Center Tutors
Please keep in mind that these are only general guidelines; always defer to your professor’s specifications for a given assignment. If you have any questions about the content represented here, please contact the Writing Centers so that we can address them for you.
Introduction
In the Music Education program, you will become familiar with the fundamentals of music as well as classroom and rehearsal techniques. In this program, you will learn strategies and approaches for sharing your understanding and expertise in music with young people (grades K-12).
While you might not consider traditional academic papers to be fundamental to your studies in Music Education, you might be surprised to find out that strong writing skills will be advantageous to you in your classes and your career after you graduate. As a Music Education student, you will be expected to utilize research, public speaking and composition skills to create an effective and lively classroom.
Prefered Bibliographic Style
Citation style will vary depending on your assignment. The most common bibliographic styles in Music Education is APA. See the Writing Center’s Citations and Formatting for guidelines.
Canada’s Western Libraries offers a helpful guide to not only citing music sources in your essay and bibliography but to the conventions of writing about notes, keys, chords and compositions as well.
Common Writing Assignments
- Lesson Plan – Construct a lesson plan that details not only lesson content (what pieces your students will be working on), but objectives, or what students should take away from the lesson (should be able to play measures 2-10 without stopping for breath), as well as a rationale, justifying the significance of the lesson plan’s learning goals (learn to master the art of breathing).
- Teaching Philosophy – A teaching philosophy requires you to provide a rationale for your teaching style and the strategies you will utilize when teaching music (consider your experiences in the classroom if you have never taught a class before and use concrete examples to illustrate your teaching methods). Iowa State University offers a comprehensive guide to Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement.
- Music History and Analysis – You may be required to critically consider or assess a piece of music, often acknowledging the context in which it was written.
Standards for Music Education
(from the National Association for Music Education)
- Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
- Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.
- Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments.
- Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines.
- Reading and notating music.
- Listening to, analyzing, and describing music.
- Evaluating music and music performances.
- Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts.
- Understanding music in relation to history and culture.
Helpful Resources
DePaul Music Education Links
The department website includes curriculum requirements according to concentration.
Online Source
The DePaul Center for Writing-based Learning offers a Lesson Plan Writing Guide.
Books
- The following book details strategies to writing lesson plans geared toward music classroom. More specifically, it compares different types of learning, how to apply principles to musical learning, etc.:
- Anderson, William M., and Joy E. Lawrence. Integrating Music into the Elementary Classroom. Australia: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2001. Print.
- The following book takes the “5-star approach” to writing lesson plans, offering suggestions for hands-on activities as well as serves as a guide to developing lesson plans from start to finish:
- Serdyukov, Peter, and Mark Ryan. Writing Effective Lesson Plans: the 5-star Approach. Boston: Pearson Allyn and Bacon, 2008. Print.
