Pop Quiz!!

This is my third year teaching and the first year it occurred to me to follow the music textbooks that came with the job. So far, they have provided an excellent guide and resource. One thing I do not like about them, however, is that they are textbooks. That just doesn't feel right in a music room sometimes. Especially the tests for each concept. For the lower grades I've come up with a way to use the audio from the tests in the book without it really feeling like a test.

I love being surrounded by people who think I am a good artist. 

There are a lot of opposites in music, so I gave the students two movements - hands on your head for choice #1 or hands in your lap for choice #2. Then I played the listening examples that came with the book and the students showed me their answers. 

First grade has been talking about tempo, so this is my example of their aural test.

After playing the example and seeing how everyone answered, we discussed what we just heard. Then I would play the example again. Every student would show me the right answer after hearing it the second time. This was a quick way for me to see that not everybody understood the concept, so then I let the students explain it in their own words and that was enough so that everyone got the right answer the second time. I'm debating on coming up with more movement options as a way to give my upper grades a multiple choice test. Mwahahaha...