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What Do I Do After the AP Exam? Starting Points for the End of the Term
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by Brian E. Vaughn
Episcopal High School
Houston, Texas
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The "Big Day" has come and gone, and you now have a couple of weeks left before the end of the school term. There's precious little incentive for the students to continue with the textbook chapter you abandoned in the frenetic days right before the exam, and you find yourself woolgathering over the prospect of two weeks in which you don't have to explain the difference between direct fifths and hidden fifths for the umpteenth time. Sound familiar?
Here are some practical suggestions about how to make the last few weeks of the term a productive time that won't involve heavy lifting or pushing rocks uphill.
Assessment
With all the changes that have taken place in the AP Music Theory Exam in recent years, it is even more important that we teachers stay current with the content of the exam. It is vital that you get some feedback from students about how the AP Exam went and how you can benefit from their experience. Suddenly, you are the person in the room with the least amount of experience with this year's exam, and they have valuable knowledge that can help you better design your teaching strategies for the next year.
A discussion of the exam's merits is certainly in order; you may want to ask the students about their comfort level with each of the areas tested. What did they breeze through, in what areas did they feel their preparation was adequate, and which areas absolutely stymied them? In a discussion environment, you'll get good ideas from their collective wisdom, and the discussion can be very valuable for future instruction.
(Important note: It is not allowable to discuss specific multiple-choice questions and answers. However, a general discussion between students and teachers on topics that appeared on the exam, including comments on how well the course covered those topics, comments related to preparation, comments on how well the student thinks he or she did, and comments on the perceived difficulty of the exam are acceptable. Because even general, well-intentioned discussions after the exam can result in the generation of specifics about the questions, the College Board® recommends proceeding with caution when talking about the exams with your students. However, it is not the intention of the AP Program's policy to outlaw all discussion about the multiple-choice section. Rather, the policy's intention is to avoid making it possible for students or teachers to have knowledge of specific questions that might reappear on future exams.)
Enrichment
Along with assessment, there are many ways to enrich the experience of the AP Music Theory course, both for your current students and for those who will be entering the class the following fall. One area that many AP teachers struggle with is producing examples for the aural skills components of the exam; your students might try their hands at writing aural skills questions you could use next year, on melodic dictation, harmonic dictation, error detection, and so on. In doing so, they will have to show mastery of the material -- in terms of both notation and content. They will also be letting you know what they deem most important in helping you prepare the next group that comes through the door.
Another avenue of enrichment would be to allow students to explore their musical curiosity and creativity through individual projects that go beyond the AP curriculum. Given a couple of weeks to work, students may write a proposal, gather materials, do research, and work on a culminating event that synthesizes their yearlong experience in music theory. For example, a student might choose to do a structural analysis of an existing piece and then compose his own piece following the same structure. A student might have been fascinated by the eight minutes you found to talk about serial or aleatoric music; she could write her own tone rows to be performed by classmates or make the framework for a "chance" piece that could be done with found materials on the presentation day.
In addition to composition, there are a great many ways that music theory is expressed in other careers in music. It may be of merit for students to do projects on music and related visual arts, or music and recording technology (and Internet-based publication!), or the music theory aspects of ethnomusicology (why do children of every culture on the planet sing sol-mi-la-sol?). The list of potential areas for enrichment is limited only by students' imaginations and industry.
Entertainment
After a year of studying formal structures and traditional forms, a year of skill-and-drill, it might be time to encourage the students to engage in some less-than-traditional forms of study. Looking at the world of the popular music recording industry, we may find that our students are much savvier in their knowledge of what goes into producing a "hit" than we are. A fundamental premise of my own theory instruction is that if music is studied in a vacuum, apart from knowledge of the times in which it was produced, we may fail to understand the significance of emerging trends in contemporary music.
Students may benefit greatly from selecting a form of popular music, or choosing an era that was defined by its musical style, and formalizing a study of the theoretical underpinnings of that music. What is the significance of the three-chord rock 'n' roll song? What would the sixties have been without the British Invasion? Can anyone adequately explain pop music of the early eighties?
Are we helping our students become good consumers of music and other arts? A unit on music criticism may answer that question and could include a year-end trip to a concert where they could write about their reactions. Our students' ability to observe, evaluate, and critically discriminate should be well honed at this point. Providing an outlet for their informed criticism of a musical performance may be just the thing to summarize a year of music theory study.
Summary
These suggestions should not be thought of as comprehensive but as more of a starting point for creative activity. The end of the year can certainly be a difficult time to keep students motivated and on task. Entertaining a discussion of their ideas about the AP Music Theory Exam can be of assistance to you for the future and provide academic closure for them. Encouraging students to make connections between contemporary culture and their formal study of music can be immensely satisfying for both you and your students -- everyone gains an even greater sense of pride and accomplishment.
Brian E. Vaughn is a 1987 graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, from which he received degrees in vocal performance and music education. Despite the excellence of the music theory faculty at Oberlin, Brian remained an extraordinarily average student of the subject. Now a career music educator, Brian has repented of his lascivious parallelisms, and has embarked on a crusade to deliver his students from inappropriate voice leadings. He is the Music Department chairman at Episcopal High School in Houston, Texas.
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