Tips for Music Teachers!

Read our tips for maximizing Formative in your K-12 music classroom.

Sara Cowley avatar
Written by Sara Cowley
Updated over a week ago

Read on to find out more about how to use different question types for Music, examples of sites you can embed into your formatives, and some examples of formatives you can clone!

Whether you teach general music, band, choir, orchestra, or music theory: Formative is for you!

Using different question types

Here are some of our favorite question types to use in Music classes!

🌟 Drawing

Students can draw, type, underline, highlight, circle, and even upload images in a Drawing question. Teachers can likewise draw, type, and upload images to the background!

  1. Upload a musical excerpt to the background, and have students circle or mark a particular concept, i.e. a specific note, dynamic marking, or even a full harmonic analysis for music theory.

  2. Upload a blank staff to the background, and ask students to notate a particular note, chord, or melodic dictation exercise:

🌟 Free Response

Get your students writing about music by uploading/inserting a video and then assigning a Free Response question.

📌 Useful music sites that you can embed into your formatives

You can embed websites anywhere in a formative as a content item. Silve/Gold users can also embed within a specific question. Check out our Embed article for instructions.

🌟 There are many great music sites of all types to embed into your formatives:

Composition/Exploration

Interactive Instruments

Ear Training

Technique

Silver/Gold users get even more helpful features

As a Silver/Gold teacher, you can hear and see students with features like Audio Response and Video Response to assess student performance of technique, repertoire, sight-reading, and more.

You can embed a metronome and other tools from Musicca and Musictheory.net into any formative. Silver/Gold users can embed within a specific question.

🌟 Categorize (Silver/Gold)

Use the Categorize question type to have students match note names with notation or vocabulary terms with definitions!

🌟 Add Show Your Work to any other question type! (Silver/Gold teachers)

Get the best of both worlds! Add a Show Your Work canvas to any question type, so Formative auto-grades the students' final answer, and you get to see their workings!

📌 Great examples of Music formatives

Check out these awesome formatives, created by Formative team members and other Music educators! Click on the title to clone them to your dashboard, and you can edit and assign them to your classes!

🌟 Examples for K-12 Music: This formative has the examples referenced in this article and other similar questions.

🌟 Elementary Music: Presto vs. Largo: K-5 students watch and listen to determine whether music is presto or largo, in addition to dragging and dropping terms into categories.

🌟 Beginning Band - Instrument Families: After reviewing the classic instrument families, this formative contains a performance element at the end that can be modified to fit a vocal or string class.

🌟 Folder: Great Examples of Music Formatives: A folder that has something for everyone! Performance reflections, music theory, and more.

Additional Resources

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