Little Kids Rock 1
A Critical Analysis of the Little Kids Rock Curriculum
Michelle Elfrank
Vanderbilt University
Capstone-March 4, 2008
Abstract
Little Kids Rock serves two functions. First they are a philanthropic organization
that donate instruments and support to schools with high free or reduced lunch
populations. Next, they also have created a curriculum for their students in which
they learn to play guitar, keyboard, and drums through the use of popular rock and
hip-hop tunes. This paper takes a critical look at the curriculum under the lens of
learners and learning, learning environment, curriculum and instructional
strategies, and assessment strategies too see if Little Kids Rock students’ needs
are met in the classroom.
1
Little Kids Rock 2
What is Little Kids Rock?
Little Kids Rock got its start in a first grade classroom in California. Classroom
teacher, David Wish, wanted to enrich his impoverished school by starting an afterschool guitar class. As the popularity of the class grew he soon began teaching only
guitar, and soon his idea for an elementary guitar curriculum “catapulted into a nationally
recognized not-for-profit organization that has served thousands of students in seven
states” (“Little Kids Rock”, 2007). The organization is supported by an all-star board
including such names as Paul Simon and BB King. It is continually growing and using
all available resources to help bring music into schools and classes where funding and
support are low.
The Little Kids Rock mission is to “inspire children to express themselves
through music, building creativity, confidence, and self-esteem that are critical to success
in school and beyond” (“Little Kids Rock”, 2007). They realize this mission through
providing free training for teachers, innovative materials and curriculum, and free
instruments for schools where fifty percent or more of the students qualify for free or
reduced lunch. I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to attend the Little Kids
Rock teacher training weekend in Nashville to gain a thorough understanding of the
philosophy, framework, and methodology of Little Kids Rock. While the program has
received much financial and community support, there has not been many attempts to
formally analyze the content of Little Kids Rock. In this paper I examined the Little
Kids Rock curriculum against leading research in the fields of instrumental pedagogy,
national assessment standards, and developmental music psychology under the broad
categories of learners and learning, learning environment, curriculum and instructional
Little Kids Rock 3
strategies, and assessment and found that the Little Kids Rock curriculum could stand
alone as a viable music program in American public schools.
Learners and Learning
Through his experiences and observations teaching young children to read, David
Wish began to see the same trends in the way his students learned music. Little Kids
Rock therefore approaches music as if it were a language. They cite four critical
similarities to support their approach. First, both mediums can express human emotion.
Music and language exist in written and spoken forms. Both can serve as vehicles for
human communication. Lastly, for language or musical acquisition to occur they must be
learned from others who have achieved some level of fluency.
Music as a Language
Medium that can express human emotion. Anyone who has come into contact
with music cannot deny its power to make us feel. The reason we are drawn naturally to
music is its special quality to make us feel. When listening to our favorite music we are
transported past the surface act of listening to sound to the inner world of our emotions
and reactions to the sounds. Feeling directly ties us to the human aspect of our
experience. It is this tie that makes music in movies so powerful. Rather than simply
empathizing with characters, music allows us to feel the emotions of the story. Feelings
are at the core of every experience and because they exist without any need for mediation
and music allows us to translate and share the feelings of an experience with others in a
powerful way.
Written and spoken forms. Like language, music exists both in a written and
spoken form. Music in the western art tradition passes from generation to generation or
Little Kids Rock 4
between performers in the form of a musical score with accompanying sheet music for
the individual performers. However, there is one slight difference between musical and
literary publications. A musical score is more closely linked to that of a theater playbook
in that music and theater are not intended to exist solely on the printed page. While the
notation that represents the music exists on the page, the page itself is not music until it is
realized by instruments and the ear. Through extensive training one can develop the
internal ear so that you can realize the sound of the piece internally, as Beethoven did
when composing after losing his hearing. However, to “hear” an entire score by simply
looking at the page is a skill rare even among professional musicians.
Translating the sounds we hear into musical language is related to how we
process the sounds in spoken language. In both instances the brain translates seemingly
unrelated sounds into meaning:
In themselves, however, these sounds are us sounds, with various physical
characteristics such as pitch, amplitude, and timbre. . .What makes them language
is what human brains do with them. These internal structures seem to be divided
into three types: phonology, syntactic, and semantic (Sloboda, 1987, p. 30)
Phonology describes the way in which the brain sorts varying sounds into discrete
and separable units. These unites are the basic building blocks of language. In music it
describes the subtle changes in pitch, timbre, and rhythm that occur across time.
Generally the ear does not distinguish every slight change in these elements, but rather
notices changes in a broad sense. For example, if a piece changes modes from major to
minor, the ear will immediately notice that something is different, giving the piece a sad
quality rather than hearing that the third scale degree has been lowered by one half step.
Little Kids Rock 5
As one becomes more proficient as a musician or audience member the degree of
categorization becomes much more specific similar to how as we age we our sense of the
subtleties of language increases. (Sloboda, 1987, p. 31)
Syntax refers to the ordering of the basic phonological building blocks. Syntax or
grammar, is applied as “a set of rules which is capable of generating (or recognizing) all
sequences which are acceptable, and fails to generate, or reject sequences which are not
acceptable” (Sloboda, 1987, p. 31). In music this applies directly to how the ear processes
tonality vs. atonality. It is much easier for a listener to understand and remember
melodies and themes that follow the familiar rules of western tonality. We expect in
major keys that the seventh scale degree will always lead back to tonic, and that dominant
chords will resolve to the tonic chord. These leading tones and harmonic motion make
up the grammar of what is acceptable in western tonality. These rules have been
developed and codified since the time of Bach in the seventeenth century. The bulk of
the folk, patriotic, and popular music follows these sets of rules. When genres such as
modern art music and later styles of jazz break these rules the natural tendency is for the
ear to reject what it hears at first as wrong, making these types of music less accessible.
The last component, semantics, is the processes whereby the symbols of a
language are able to be mapped onto, or represent, objects, states of affairs, and events
that are not part of that language. (Sloboda, 1987, p. 32) For language to mean anything
to us, we have to know the object that the language signifies. Children do not learn the
meaning of their first words until they are already familiar with the objects and states that
the words represent. Just as children learn the meaning of language through context
embedded interactions, musical meaning comes in the same way. Simply exposing
Little Kids Rock 6
students to music or teaching the written symbols of notation will not give them the tools
to engage in the art form. Placing these things into context through use of familiar pieces
or performing is essential to learning. Emotional meaning in music must then also be
tailored to the range of emotional developmentally. Students can only relate to how
music makes them feel if they have the words to describe the emotions or another life
experience that correlates to the feeling present in the music.
Primary forms of human communication. Music may be conceived as another way
for people to think: “music is a form of thought and it develops over the life span much as
other forms of thought develop, principally those such as language, mathematical
reasoning, and ideas about the physical world” (Serafine 1988). The knowledge that
music can portray human emotions is widely accepted, but music can also go deeper in
our cognitive processes.
Emotions are nameable in words. Feelings are nonverbal, “newly minted” crossings
into consciousness of felt information, or knowing, consisting of feeling beyond
language. It is such knowing—knowing through experiencing what ordinary language
cannot express—that music is so potently able to bring to the level of awareness.
Such knowing is, in the fullest sense of the word cognitive in the post-Descartes
sense, the sense in which the body and reeling are recognized to be essential
components in what humans are capable of knowing. (Reimer, 1989, chap. 3)
In this sense music allows us to share experiences in a more powerful way than simply
describing them verbally or visually because it elicits a physical response. The limitation
to this effect is that musical feeling must be context embedded in that the function of the
sounds must be understood to project feeling. However, in the context of western art and
Little Kids Rock 7
popular music I will show that students come to school already well versed in the
traditions of their musical world.
Little Kids Rock and Music Acquisition Theory: Learning from those already
fluent in the language. Based on the principles of language acquisition theory, David
Wish developed a music acquisition theory. Language acquisition theory states that
infants learn to speak by listening and interacting with the people around them. Little
Kids Rock believes that children should learn music in the same way. Table 1 describes
Little Kids Rock’s comparison of language acquisition to their view of current music
educational practices.
Table 1
Little Kids Rock Language Acquisition vs. Music Acquisition
Language Acquisition
1. Listening or “pre-production” (birth
to 6 months)
Child is in listening mode only. Sound
production is limited to crying, sneezing
ect.
2. Approximation/Imitation (6months to
2.5 years)
Children start to use “baby talk” and
individual words. Point where parents often
say “She/he is talking!”
3. Intermediate fluency (2.5-5 years)
Children start stringing words together and
increasingly use language to get needs met.
Parents hear utterances like “Mama milk
now” and may say “He/she is speaking in
sentences!”
4. Fluency (5 years old)
Child has achieved “native-like”
proficiency in their mother-tongue.
5. Reading and Composition (six years
old and up)
Child begins to read and put own thoughts
into writing.
Music Acquisition
1. Listening or “pre-production” (birth
to 5 years)
Notice how much longer many children can
spend without “making noise” on musical
instruments.
2. Approximation/Imitation (5-9 years)
Music is taught in a cursory manner. Focus
is often on singing and clapping out basic
rhythms.
3. Reading/Intermediate fluency (9
years-High School. . .later?)
Formal instrumental instruction begins
with technique and reading being taught
simultaneously. Emphasis is placed upon
playing through reading.
4. Reading/Fluency (High School. . . ???)
Child proficient on their instrument and
can express themselves musically.
5. Reading and Composition (High
School. . .later. . .never?)
Little Kids Rock 8
(Wish, 1999, p. 6)
In their analysis of school music programs and the experience of their students,
Little Kids Rock challenges that the voice should be students’ primary instrument as they
develop musically. Traditionally this has been the case because children arrive to school
more prepared vocally than on any other type of instrument. Just as children come to
school fluent in speech, which has prepared them to add abstract written language to their
repertoire of skills, children also come to school fluent in singing and listening abilities.
Children begin to respond to music as early as three to six months old. Babies
turn towards the sound, and often show signs of enjoyment and wonderment. Once these
children discover music the next step is the development of a physical response. Music
will inspire in them swaying, bouncing, or the precursors to dancing. (Hargreaves, 1986)
At eight months children begin to vocalize musical sounds. Just as children begin
to babble as a precursor to speech, musical babbling occurs as specific response to music
heard by the child. (Hargreaves, 1986) Babbling songs consist of sounds of varied pitch,
produced either on one vowel or on very few syllables. They do not necessarily conform
to any musical grammar or syntax, are free in their use of rhythm, and phrases come from
the need to breathe rather than purposeful cadences or points of rest.
Two year olds show marked increase in the amount of active response to the
music of their world. Physical movements become more sophisticated and begin to
resemble the dance moves of their parents and more mature companions. Rhythmically,
instead of the movements being independent of the rhythmic activity of the music, the
children respond to and match the energy of the music. (Hargreaves, 1986)
Little Kids Rock 9
From ages three to five children begin to internalize their responses to music.
This is the beginning of the ability to listen critically to music. Internalization gives
children the ability to apply their responses to music in broader contexts such as
imaginative play and forming social relationships. (Hargreaves, 1986) By the age of six
or seven Hargreaves claims that “children possess many fundamental skills required for
full-scale musical perception and performance” (Hargreaves, 1986, p. 83)
Hargreaves’ claims are also supported by the ideas of Gardner who suggests that a
“reasonably competent seven year old should understand the basic metrical properties of
his musical system and the appropriate scales, harmonies, cadences, and groupings, even
as he should be able, give some motifs, to combine them into a musical unit that is
appropriate to his culture, but not a complete copy of work previously known. What is
lacking is fluency in motor skills, which allow for performance, experience with the code,
tradition and style of that culture, and a range of feeling life” (Hargreaves, 1986, p. 83).
Little Kids Rock opens more musical avenues to their students by repeating this
process on the guitar. They want to teach students to speak on the guitar rather than
simply with their voice as part of their initial music education. This process is called the
sound-before-sight theory to music education.
Sound-Before-Sight Theory
Traditionally, school music programs are the place where students gain the
“experience with the code”. However, Little Kids Rock does not emphasize reading
music in their approach to music education. This can be somewhat limiting to the
student’s growth:
Little Kids Rock 10
The child who cannot read music is in a very simple position to the child who
cannot read words. He simply does not know what a wonderful world exists
beyond the barrier of the symbol—the secret code which he cannot crack.
Between him and incredible wealth stand five lines and some dots with tails
(Philpott & Spruce, 2007, p. 23)
Learning to read musical notation is essential for meaningful participation and
performance in western art music. It allows for large numbers of people to play together
accurately and efficiently and gives the musician the ability to learn a piece quickly
without having to memorize notes and rhythms. It also provides the basis for more
critical study of music theory and composition, because the student can see as well as
hear what is happening in the music. For all of these reasons, reading notation has been
included in the traditional approach to music education.
Little Kids Rock challenges the convention that learning to read music opens
doors to further musical exploration by making rock and roll the genre of study. “If
students come to school “fluent” in singing and the parent culture, reading notation is not
inappropriate. Singing technique is couple with notation reading just as speech and
reading are simultaneously developed” (Hargreaves 1986 p. 84). However, because
Little Kids Rock focuses on developing students as instrumentalist, and the students do
not come to school fluent on the guitar, they developed a methodology in which reading
notation is not essential. This approach is known as sound before sight because the
students develop their aural and playing skills (sound) before learning to read notation
(sight). Because this popular art form is based on oral transcription, students can
participate in a meaningful way without learning to read. Many of the most famous rock
Little Kids Rock 11
stars and guitarist never learned to read music, but rather learned from listening to the
radio, or learning from a more experienced colleague or friend. The benefit of this
approach is that it allows students to build fluency on their instrument before adding the
abstract written notation to the process. So, for an instrumentalist when they begin to read
they can already “speak” on the guitar, not just their voice: “Musical literacy is not the
ability to read staff notation, but to be able to communicate and respond to music”
(Sloboda, 1988, p. 39).
Using sound before sight techniques is not only prevalent in the rock tradition.
Many instrumental teachers believe that learning to read notation should come only after
students have developed their aural skills.
Once children develop their aural and performance skills sufficiently, and then
learn to read music, their reading and listening skills will reinforce each other.
Only this way can children move beyond imitation and memorization and learn to
think musically for themselves (Bluestine, 2000, p. 39)
The most successful methodology using the sight before sound technique is the Suzuki
approach to instrumental music.
Suzuki also approaches musical learning like it is a language. Suzuki’s theories
are based on the importance of the mother-tongue. In Suzuki’s own words:
Children everywhere learn to speak their own tongues fluently which shows that
they have a very high level of ability. The most successful example of the
learning process is the mother-tongue method. Not only do normal children all
over the world learn the basics of their mother-tongue without text, test, or
classroom, but they also learn to speak the dialect with its often subtle nuance,
Little Kids Rock 12
and they are able to build an amazing vocabulary before they ever set foot in a
school (Starr, 1989, p. 377)
The three most important elements to the mother tongue method are the
cooperation of the parent in the lesson process, learning through imitation, and learning
without notation in the early years of training. Parents in the Suzuki method learn to play
before the students begin lessons so they can serve as motivating examples and help in
the home during everyday practice. Just as children look to parental models when
learning to talk and are motivated by the want to imitate, this phenomenon also applies to
learning to play an instrument. Students learning through imitation, not notation,
correlates directly to language acquisition and David Wish’s ideas on music acquisition.
[The Suzuki pupil] has not been hampered by learning to read first. He has
learned to use the language of music before he learns to read it. He has heard and
been made aware of good tone quality, sensitive musical phrasing, and fine
rhythmic execution. . .musically (Landers, 1984, p. 14)
Suzuki exists as one of the most popular forms of early instrumental training in
the U.S. with over seven thousand registered Suzuki instructors across the nation serving
thousands more students everyday. (“Suzuki Association of the Americas”, 2006). The
success of this sound-before-sight approach supports the use of the Little Kids Rock
method for its students.
Learning Environment
Teaching music as a language implies that music students are acquiring a second
language through their study. Just as learning in a second language requires specific
environmental factors to be successful, music acquisition requires a classroom
Little Kids Rock 13
environment in which students feel safe, are encouraged to take risks, and have
meaningful access and interactions with native speakers and their peers.
Little Kids Rock sites the work of Dr. Stephen Krashen and how an “affective
filter” can influence the learning process. The affective filter simply defined means the
willingness to make mistakes. (Wish, 1999) This explains why it seems that young
children learn a new language with more ease than adults. In reality, adults have an
advantage over young children because they have developed fluency in one language
giving them a framework to better understand and acquire the second language
(Crawford, 1995). However, adults tend to have a much higher affective filter, so are less
willing to engage in the language and risk making mistakes that lead to feelings of
embarrassment or shame.
The Affective Filter in Music
This same affective filter exists in people’s interactions with music. John A.
Sloboda conducted an “Autobiographical Memory Study” to measure people’s affective
response to musical situations. In this study he asked people to write down the details of
memories they have which involved music from the first ten years of their life. The data
collection includes one hundred and thirteen memories collected from seventy adults with
all varieties of musical training and interests. This approach allows Sloboda’s data to be
based on naturally occurring musical events rather than lab created situations, offers
insight into how the early experiences affect later musical involvement, and lastly adults
can provide a more articulate verbal response to their memories than children (Sloboda
1987).
Sloboda encouraged the participants to write freely, but asked them all ten
Little Kids Rock 14
prompts to help focus the process:
1. How old were you?
2. Where did the experience take place?
3. Of what event did the music form a part?
4. Who were you with?
5. Can you identify the piece of music, or say anything about it?
6. If you can identify it, have you experienced it recently, and do you know it well?
7. What significance of meaning did the experience have for you at the time?
8. Did the experience influence you subsequent behavior or attitudes in any way?
9. How often, if at all, does this memory come to you?
10. Any other comment.
After subjects had finished the recall task, they were asked to provide information on:
1. Current level of involvement with music.
2. Amount of formal music tuition received prior to the age of ten.
3. The degree to which experiences such as that reported determined current level of
involvement with music.
4. The number of other memories available which were not written down. (Slodoba,
1987, p. 35)
The results of the memory collection showed that musical memories fall in two
major categories of significance. The first is internal significance, in which the music
itself could have some effect on the person. The second is external significance in which
the context in which the music was taking place could have some effect. These two
categories were then rated as positive, neutral, or negative experiences.
The results produced several key findings to support Little Kids Rock’s desire to
reduce the affective filter in learning music. The first is that experiences with positive
internal significance were more likely to promote higher involvement with music as
adults. However, this was not true of external significance.
People will not pursue musical activity just because they have experienced
positive events around music. The positive experience has to come from the
music itself (Sloboda 1987)
Little Kids Rock 15
The importance of positive internal significance relates directly to providing rich and
meaningful interactions with music for students. Little Kids Rock provides this through
the use of the children’s music. The use of rock and hip-hop songs as the main body of
repertoire recognizes and respects the student’s artistic taste and taps into the types of
music that needs no promoting by the teacher to get the student excited. Sloboda’s
findings support the use of current popular songs by showing that traditional folk songs
and nursery rhymes are far less likely to create a positive internal significance.
My hypothesis is that it is the first experience of a piece which led to the most
profound effects. Many of the rhymes and hymns will have been repeated many
times in the child’s life, and the first experience of them may well have been
before the age of concrete memories (Sloboda 1987)
While there was some evidence of external significance being positive experiences for
the participants, external significance allows for more negative experiences.
Negative significance is most often associated with performing situations (56% of
cases) and almost never with listening (4% of cases). . . Main negative
experiences are nervousness, embarrassment, humiliation, criticism (either feared
or actual) associated with the performing situation. These negative events almost
invariably (85% of cases) had a negative influence on the subsequent involvement
of these subjects with music, inhibiting either performing or listening involvement
(Sloboda 1987).
The classroom setting can be a prime environment for a negative experience for students
to engage in performing or risk taking with music. Students may feel embarrassed at
their ability level, or that they like music in general in front of their peers, and the
Little Kids Rock 16
pressure of feeling evaluated by the teacher may also negatively affect their engagement
in music.
Encouraging Risk Taking
Little Kids Rock emphasizes teaching students to create a social contract between
audience members and performers. They encourage audience members to listen and
participate in the performance by showing their appreciation through compliments and
showing respect to the performer by listening intently. Dual participation by both the
audience and performer helps break down the mystery of musical performance and talent.
Barrier between these two entities:
reinforce an illusion which projects the sound of music away from the realities of its
origins in human work, both physical and mental. As in the puppet theatre, the modes
of production become veiled in mystery, and we may have no particular wish to
venture behind the proscenium arch (Sloboda, 1988, p. vi).
Little Kids Rock also encourages constructive criticism where students say what they
liked about the performance, and something to improve on. Little Kids Rock encourages
a sense of community by rewarding students who take risks and teaching students from a
young age that constructive criticism is a way for the whole class to improve their
playing and listening skills rather than a time for judgment. Through daily concerts they
make the process of making music more valuable than the final product. This takes the
pressure off the students because progressive performances do not demand perfection and
are rarely summative
In the teacher workshop David Wish effectively demonstrated the technique of
“making risk taking cool”. He asked the group of adults, who would like to take a solo
Little Kids Rock 17
on their guitar for the group?” Knowing that the adults were unlikely to want to take the
risk of mistakes in front of a group of strangers and fellow musicians, no one
volunteered. David waited patiently and then one woman bravely raised her hand. He
then proceeded to teach her one note on the guitar and told her to play it any what she
liked while he played a funk groove on his guitar. Immediately she relaxed along with
the entire group of adults. Not only was she not embarrassed, the activity looked fun.
This single act earned the trust of the workshop. The participants knew David would
never put them on the spot to do something out of their artistic or technical abilities.
Volunteers from then on were quick to raise their hands for a variety of demonstrations
throughout the weekend. This simple technique effectively lowed the adults affective
filter, and would easily translate to a classroom of eager students.
Curriculum and Instructional Strategies
In all of Little Kids Rock lessons there are three overarching themes to help
promote their effectiveness: a leaner centered approach, the use of scaffolding, and
creating a community of learners. The content specifics will be discussed later in the
assessment section in a comparison of Little Kids Rock and the National Standards for
Music.
Learner Centered
Learner-centered environments “pay careful attention to the knowledge, skills,
attitudes, and beliefs that learners bring to the educational setting” (Bransford, Brown, &
Cocking, 1999, chap. 6). Little Kids Rock achieves this by making the process of
learning music fun and relevant. David Wish was inspired by the effect that fun brought
to the process of learning to read with introduction of Dr. Seuss books into the public
Little Kids Rock 18
schools. Ellen Goodman of the Detroit Free Press wrote about the impact Dr. Seuss had
on reading programs: “[Forty] years ago, Dr. Seuss turned out the Cat in the Hat, a little
volume of absurdity that worked like a karate chop on the weary world of Dick Jane, and
Spot” (Wish, 1999, p. 8). Just as Dr. Seuss books brought newness and child-like
personality to the reading experience, Little Kids Rock works to bring the student’s
musical life at home to the classroom.
Schools are institutions that establish cultural norms and values. Music plays a
large role in this process. The music used in schools promotes patriotism, school spirit,
religious holidays, and the society’s social and moral codes of conduct. Music
historically has been treated as a tool for character development. In 1889 A.T. Cringan in
the Teachers Handbook of the Tonic Sol-fa System wrote that “Progressive teachers. .
.are now fully alive to the beneficial effects of the study of music as a refining moral
influence in the schoolroom and the home”( Philpott & Spruce, 2007, p. 22). Music was
seen as invaluable “for the education and character building value of the stirring words
that are sung” as seen by these lyrics taken from a Canadian school song book:
My hands how nicely they are made, To hold, to touch and do:
I’ll try to learn some honest trade; That will be useful to;
My eyes, how fit they are to read. To mind my work and look;
I ought to think of that, indeed, And use them in my book
Songbook for Canadian schools (Philpott & Spruce, 2007, p. 22)
The music which working class pupils experienced outside of school, and which was part
of their cultural identity was not seen as either high art worthy of intellectual study, or as
music that contained the power of character education. Rock and hip-hop have been
viewed as low art forms and therefore unworthy and even degenerate.
Little Kids Rock 19
Little Kids Rock challenges historical convention and maintains that
incorporating student culture into the learning experience can produce profound positive
effects: “When students see their musical taste and cultural currency reflected in their
music curriculum, the response is overwhelming” (Wish, 1999, p. 8). Using popular
genres of music provides an immediate access point to the learning process because the
students learn to play through the music they already know and enjoy from their nonscholastic lives. Now instead of revisiting stale etudes or folk songs, the students
immediately get to the music that excites them. They immediately get to what is fun
about playing guitar, being able to jam to their favorite rock tunes.
Scaffolding
At the core of all the Little Kids Rock learning experiences is scaffolding that
leads to musical independence. Vygotsky believed that in order for students to learn most
efficiently you must meet them in their zone of proximital development. The zone of
proximital development meets the student at their current level of development and
pushes them slightly with the assistance of the teacher. In this way the knowledge is coconstructed by both student and teacher. (Garton, 2001)
Little Kids Rock teachers are expected to be proficient guitar players so they can
provide the necessary scaffolding in the process. This differs from the traditional
approach to instrumental music where the teacher conducts from the podium rather than
playing along with the students. Each lesson is designed so the that the Little Kids Rock
student practices a simple skill while the teacher plays groove or accompaniment patterns
along with the student so it immediately feels like the student is making real music. These
“jam sessions” not only help motivate the child they push them to develop the skills more
Little Kids Rock 20
quickly because they get a lot of meaningful repetition and aural training as they work to
understand how the notes they play fits into the groove set by the teacher. Each school is
also provided with a free copy of the software Band-In-A-Box which allows both
teachers and students to create back up tracks so individual practice can still have the
same beneficial co-constructed experience.
Community of Learners
In the National Research Council’s How People Learn framework it states that
one key component of learning is to use a community centered approach that promotes a
sense of community through shared goals and values. (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking,
1999). Little Kids Rock establishes a community of learners in two major ways, through
the use of ItunesU and the incorporation of live performances to the learning process.
Through ItunesU Little Kids Rock has made private lessons available to anyone
with internet access. Students and teachers can download for free the entire guitar and
drum set lessons Little Kids Rock has to offer. Each is a video of a real live player giving
the instruction in small manageable steps. The lessons also include graphics that make it
easy to follow along with the fingerings on the guitar and pattern of beats on the
individual instruments of the drum set. These tools allow students to learn
independently while they are away from the classroom and provide teachers with a fun
interactive tool to facilitate individual practice time in the classroom setting.
Live Music
Little Kids Rock extends the learning community by bringing “real life” musicians
into schools. Not only do they encourage teachers to use their own contacts to bring in
guest clinicians and performers, they facilitate putting teacher in contact with big name
Little Kids Rock 21
performers. An adult from the community who share their time makes a positive impact
on the students in several ways. First, the children see that their community cares about
them and their education. In the schools that Little Kids Rock serves, this simple fact
may not always be apparent to the students. Next, the guest can share with students how
music has impacted his or her life giving the student’s study relevance beyond the
classroom walls. Lastly, it creates excitement and momentum for the study when the
students get to meet a celebrity or see a really fine and exciting live performance. Some
of the volunteers who work with Little Kids Rock include the following people:
1. Bonnie Raitt: recording artist
2. James Burton: Elvis Presley’s longtime guitarist
3. Joe Satriani: recording artist
4. B.B. King: Legendary blues artist
5. Paul Simon: recording artist
6. Steve Vai: recording artist
7. Brad Delson: Linkin Park guitarist
8. Les Paul: inventor of the solid-body electric guitar
9. Jason Newsted: Bassist with Tommy Lee’s new group Supernova
10. Carlos Santana: Grammy winning songwriter and recording artist
11. Mike Stone: Queensryche guitarist
12. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra
13. Marcus Henderson: guitarist for PlayStation’s Guitar Hero
14. Gregg Rolie: Co-founder of Santana and Journey
15. Rick Springfield: recording artist
16. Dave Mason: recording artist
17. Bob Weir: Grateful Dead guitarist
18. Tom Waits: recording artist
19. Liberty DeVitto: member of Billy Joel’s band
20. Zigaboo Modeliste: legendary funk drummer and recording artist
21. Charlie Adams: drummer for Yanni
22. Jesse McCartney: Recording Artist and member of Dream Street
23. Roy Rogers: Slide guitarist and recording artist
24. Norton Buffalo: harmonica legend
25. John Lee Hooker: recording artist
26. The String Cheese Incident
27. John E. Gee: bassist for Ted Nugent and John Mellencamp
28. Manuel Barrueco: recording artist (“Little Kids Rock”, 2007)
Little Kids Rock 22
Assessment
Little Kids Rock Assessment Rubrics
Once a teacher has been trained and a Little Kids Rock program is enacted in a
school, the teachers are required to assess their students and upload that information to a
master network with Little Kids Rock. They assess the student’s technical ability,
compositions, improvisation skills, and their psycho-social response to the
program.
Little Kids Rock 23
Little Kids Rock 24
These assessments are not meant to give students grades or for the students to
use these rubrics as a way to measure their own growth. Rather, Little Kids Rock uses
the feedback they receive from the teacher to assess the effectiveness of their program.
They use the information to first assess themselves as trainers to see if they are providing
teachers with the information and resources they need to help the students succeed. Next
they need to know how many students they are serving in each geographical market so
they know where growth is most apparent, needed, or necessary. They also use it to help
decide what kind of items in the curriculum they should develop next in order to facilitate
continued growth. Lastly, they use it to provide patrons and other interested parties with
data as to how many students they serve, how they are doing in their classes, and the kind
of growth they make academically, socially, and musically to help ensure a continued
strong relationship between the organization and the donors.
While self-evaluation is essential for the growth of the organization and for the
effectiveness of its individual teachers, it would behoove the teachers to share these
assessments with the students so they can benefit from the feedback as well. Built into
the curriculum are daily formative assessment opportunities by their peers and teachers,
but seeing how they are assessed on these rubrics gives students a chance to get a detailed
and articulate road map on their progress and how they can continue to grow. These
rubrics could also serve as an opportunity for students to self-assess their progress. Selfassessment not only makes students more in touch with the material, it also helps them
link their effort to their success on the instrument.
Little Kids Rock 25
The National Standards
In 1994 the National Committee for Standards in the Arts published the
National Voluntary Standards for K-12 instruction in dance, music, theater, and visual
arts. Through this work the Music Educators National Conference created the nine
national standards for music. These nine standards are benchmarks for every music
classroom to meet in the United States. (“National Standards for Music Education”)
Content Standard 1: singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of
music. While Little Kids Rock is a primarily instrumental class, they do achieve the first
national standard in several of the lessons found in the Little Kids Rock Guitar Method
book. The students learn to play guitar through popular songs from the radio, all of
which include adding lyrics and singing on top of the guitar chords. The method book
alone contains forty-three songs in which it is expected that the students will play the
chords and sing the lyrics simultaneously. This is encouraged to be done as both group
and solo performances. Also, even though all the songs present are pop or rock tunes,
they cover a wide variety of styles from the Latin “La Bamba” and “Oye Como Va”, to
the reggae “Jamaica Farewell” to the hymn tune “He’s Got the Whole World in His
Hands” to rock standards such as “Surfin’ USA”. The Little Kids Rock methodology
successfully meets the first content standard using the music of popular culture.
Content Standard 2: performing on instruments, alone and with others, a
varied repertoire of music. Students in Little Kids Rock play instruments everyday in
class. At first everyone starts on guitar, and as the students and program grow the
foundation works to supply them with drum sets and keyboards as well. Just as they
perform a variety of repertoire already discussed from the song selection, they perform a
Little Kids Rock 26
variety of solely instrumental genres. On the guitar students learn the twelve bar blues,
power chords, Latin rock patterns, folk tunes, and funk grooves to name a few. Again
Little Kids Rock successfully meets the standard for instrumental performance.
Content Standard 3: Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments.
Little Kids Rock meets this standard in several ways. First, they begin teaching
improvising melodies almost immediately. Rather than making improvisation a
complicated and intellectual process as it often is in jazz and classical cadenzas, they
begin with the “Famous Two-Note Solo”. To improvise a blues melody the students are
taught two notes a minor third apart. The teacher then plays the blues in A to accompany
the student while they play those two notes in any way they like. This way students
begin to improvise on their instrument in a way that is not intimidating giving them the
security to explore more things as they develop their technical skills. Next, when
students learn new chords they are encouraged to play with the strumming patterns to see
how this can change the sound of the same chord. In this way they are both reinforcing
the chord as well as improvising their own unique accompaniment patterns.
Content Standard 4: Composing and arranging music within specified
guidelines. Little Kids Rock achieves this standard through having students compose
their own songs to the chords and patterns they know. There approach is broken down in
the “Song Writing 101” lesson. In this lesson students are given six easy frameworks to
write their own song.
1. Pick four pairs of rhyming words. Now put each word at the end of a short
sentence. Now play a chord progression that you already know. Try to sing your
rhyming sentences. Does it sound like a song?
2. Pick a nice passage from a Dr. Suess Book. Next, pick a chord progression. Try
playing the progression and singing the passage on top of it.
Little Kids Rock 27
3. Pick a song that you know how to play and sing. Play it a little to get nice and
comfy. Write all new lyrics using the same melody from the original song. Make
it funny. Make it sad. Make it anyway you like. Try to sing your new song.
4. Pick a song you know how to play already. Write each chord that appears in the
song on a separate piece of paper. Put the chords in random order in front of you.
Try playing the new progression. Rearrange the chords again and repeat the
process. Do you hear anything that sounds good to your ear?
5. Pick a favorite progression or song that you already know. Play it for a friend
without telling them what song you are playing. Ask them to write words for it.
Try playing it while they sing it.
6. Pick a topic that kids learn about in school. Write a short poem about that topic.
Can you set it to music?
These simple exercises demystify the process of writing a song and make it accessible to
children at any age or skill level. They also approach the process of composition in a
variety of modalities to ensure that all students will find a method where they can be
successful.
Content Standard 5: Reading and notating music. As previously discussed,
Little Kids Rock does not teach standard notation in their approach. They trade the skill
of reading notation for immediately getting to performing music and developing students’
aural skills. However, this standard exists so that students are not limited by the type of
music they pursue to any type or genre of music. Reading standard notation is the
student’s access point to participating in western art music, big band and jazz charts, and
the study of music theory and advance composition. While their sound-before-sight
approach is a sound approach to beginning an instrumental career, Little Kids Rock
should expand their methodology to include reading notation after the students have
become proficient “speakers” on their instrument to promote lifetime growth and
learning.
Content Standard 6: Listening to, analyzing, and describing music. This
standard is not met through any lesson in the method book or from the teacher training
Little Kids Rock 28
workshop. While the individual classroom teachers may work to help students find
articulate ways of describing and analyzing the music they hear, it would not come
directly from the Little Kids Rock methodology.
Content Standard 7: Evaluating music and music performances. It is not
explicit in either the Little Kids Rock Guitar Method Book or the presentations in the
teacher training weekend how they promote growth of the students listening and
analyzing skills. However, some of this standard can be inferred from another area of
these resources and would be the responsibility of the classroom teacher to emphasize
with their students. The first was discusses previously under encouraging risk taking.
Students are encouraged to listen and evaluate the performances of their peers to help
build a level of trust between classmates. This activity can also serve to improve their
critical listening skills
Content Standard: 8. Understanding relationships between music, the other
arts, and disciplines outside the arts. Again this is not made explicit, but there are some
incidences where there is an overlap between music and other disciplines in the
composing section. Students are encouraged to write their own poetry or lyrics to their
songs engaging them in their English or Literature studies. Also, one exercise has the
students write a song about something happening in the school environment. This opens
the door to any type of interdisciplinary study.
Content Standard: 9. Understanding music in relation to history and culture.
This standard is not found anywhere in the methodology. However, it would be very
hard to teach a song written by the Beach Boys and not talk about who they were and
Little Kids Rock 29
when they were popular. This content standard would again be the responsibility of the
individual classroom teacher.
Under the lens of the National Standards there are several aspects of the Little
Kids Rock methodology that are very strong and meet the criteria in innovative and
relevant ways. They are most strong in areas of composition, improvisation, singing, and
performing on instruments. These technical areas are the basics of any performance
based music classroom. To improve the all around effectiveness of the program
however, they would need to find ways of building in the social and aesthetic aspects of a
music education. Standards like listening, analyzing, knowing the context of the piece
are all access points to really understanding pieces of music and being moved by them.
These types of activities will help students develop their own musical voice and opinions
and give them tools for further exploration of the art.
Conclusion
Little Kids Rock has effectively created a new and refreshing approach to
instrumental music education. Previously reserved for secondary students, through Little
Kids Rock students can begin this study at the elementary level. Through the use of
sound-before-sight techniques, scaffolding, and current and relevant repertoire Little Kids
Rock allows students immediate access to the art form in a meaningful way. While the
curriculum itself does not explicitly meet all the national assessment standards for music,
it lends itself easily to the inclusion of all nine through the individual creativity of the
classroom teacher. The effective learning strategies and content coupled with the
organizations ongoing philanthropy and support of its teachers has created a powerful
Little Kids Rock 30
new network of musical learning and experiences in American schools where without
Little Kids Rock, no musical training would be available to its students.
Little Kids Rock 31
Works Cited
Bluestine, Erie (2000) The Ways Children Learn Music. Chicago: GIA Publications.
Bransford, Brown, & Cocking. (1999) How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and
School. Retrieved January 12, 2008, from http://www.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/
Crawford, J. (1995). Bilingual education: History, politics, theory and practice. Los
Angeles, CA: Bilingual Educational Services, Inc.
Garton (2001). Piaget & Vygotsky: Is there any common ground?
Hargreaves, David. (1986). The Developmental Psychology of Music. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Philpott, Chris and Spruce, Gary. (2007) Learning to Teach Music in the Secondary
School. Routledge: Culture Society and Musical Learning.
Reimer, Bennett. A Philosophy of Music Education. 3rd Ed. Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1989.
Serafine, May Louis. (1998) Music as Cognition: The Development of thought in Sound.
NY: Columbia University Press.
Sloboda, John A. (1987). Music as a Language. In Frank L. Roehmann, and Frank R.
Wilson (Eds.) Music and Child Development. (pp. 28-43). St. Louis: MMB
Music, Inc.
Sloboda, John A. (1988) Generative Processes in Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Starr, William. (1987). The Suzuki Method. In Frank L. Roehmann, and Frank R. Wilson
(Eds.) Music and Child Development. (pp. 377-383). St. Louis: MMB Music, Inc.
Wish, David. (1999). Little Kids Rock Guitar Method Book. NY: Little Kids Rock.
Little Kids Rock. (n.d.). Retrieved August 11, 2007, from www.littlekidsrock.org
National Standards for Music Education. (n.d.). Retrieved October 6, 2007, from
http://www.menc.org/publication/books/standards.htm
Suzuki Association of the Americas Annual Report. (2006). Retrieved February 15, 2008,
from http://suzukiassociation.org