The Composers' Workshop: An Approach to Composing in the Classroom
S. Alex Ruthmann · Music Educators Journal · 2007
As a middle school general music teacher, I've often wrestled with how to engage my students in meaningful composing experiences. Many of the approaches I'd read about seemed disconnected from the real-world musicality I saw daily in the music my students created at home and what they did in my classes. This disconnect prompted me to look for ways of bridging the gap' between the students' musical world outside music class and their in-class composing experiences. At my school, all performing arts classes are scheduled during the same hour of the day. As a result, the choral and instrumental rooms are filled with students in band, orchestra, and choir. When I was asked to teach a general music class for students who were not already involved in performance-based music classes, I designed a composition-based class, Composers' Workshop, that could be taught in our library computer lab because no other rooms were available. Many current approaches to composing with technology require teachers to spend considerable time showing students how to use the software and hardware. Technologies described in many resources are often costly or require complex procedures to adapt for the classroom. In addition, the majority of