Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

Linda C. Brown just wrote an interesting article about utilizing Wii Music in the classroom on the MENC website. She interviewed two teachers-Helen Krofchick, who teaches music at Doby’s Mill Elementary School in Lugoff, South Carolina and Tana Tinkey, who teaches music at Mentone Elementary School in Mentone, Indiana-both received a Wii Music system for the classroom to test during the 2008-2009 school year.

The article gives a brief but excellent list of benefits and cautions to using Wii music in the classroom. In the past, I auditioned Wii Music to see where I could utilize it to enhance my current music curriculum. Krofchick and Tinkey have similar opinions to the benefits of this program in their classrooms. They stated that it does enhance traditional methods, it does support creativity, it encourages listening and improvisation, it supports a current handbells curriculum, and it supports a variety of musical styles. They also give some of the cautions such as you cannot teach solely with just Wii music, hands-on experiences are best, and the fact that the students can play the instruments in Wii music without any technique. I would also add that the conducting portion is great if you want the students to use the Wii controllers to conduct a steady beat. However, it does not encourage the students to conduct a 4-beat pattern as you would see in the music profession. Another caution I would add is that Wii tends to score very sensitively. I mean that even when you play the handbells to the steady beat (or even when you use the step program in Wii Fit to the steady beat), the Wii system tends to mark your score down if you are not completely accurate with your timing. For elementary students (especially younger ones), the low score could make them feel very unsuccessful.

The article also includes six lesson plans that are written by various teachers, who I assume, have utilized the lessons in their music classrooms. You must be an MENC member to download the lessons. The lessons have wonderful ideas for how to enhance your music classroom with Wii Music. In addition, they are very adaptable to a variety of teaching situations. I really like the lessons that have some information listed in the “prior knowledge” section. If you are using this program to enhance your current curriculum, then the “prior knowledge” section should be filled in so that the program enhances the students’ current knowledge about musical concepts. Many of the lessons include improvisation, which are so important in the music curriculum. Finally, most lessons state elementary, but I agree with the authors who specifically stated grade 3 and above because some of musical concepts found in Wii Music (such as chords and harmony) are too mature for the youngest of elementary students (this, of course, depends on your program). I thought that the teachers did a nice job authoring lessons using Wii Music.

After reading the article and downloading the lessons, I feel that I would like to try these lessons with my students. I have utilized music technology for years in my classroom and I would like to see if these lessons would work in my classroom with a few adaptations to fit my students and curriculum. My current feeling is that there are more educational software programs that would work better in a classroom situation (like Groovy Music, Super Duper Music Looper, Band In a Box, and many more) than Wii Music. In addition, I have noticed that my students treat a software program differently than a video game. Since software programs are utilized in many classrooms, the students see it as more “educational.” The video games are seen as a reward at home for when homework is complete. It lacks an educational aspect to it. However, with that said, Wii Music can be useful in the music classroom, especially before a break or at the end of the school year, for all of the pros listed above and as another way to relate to your students (which is so very important!).

I will try out these lessons plan during the school year and blog about them to track my students’ experiences.

I would love to hear your thoughts about the article and lesson plans!