Treble Clef Game Show

        I have chosen to review the Treble Clef Game Show, which can be found on the Wordwall website. This game is designed to help students recognize which letter in the musical alphabet is represented on each line and space of the treble clef. You do not need a Wordwall subscription to play the game. However, you do need a subscription to adapt it for your students. In my general music curriculum, Third Grade students are introduced to reading music on the treble clef while they begin playing Recorders. Therefore, I would integrate this game as a summative assessment within their Treble Clef reading unit. The overarching learning objective for this unit is for students to read letters from the musical alphabet based on the lines and spaces of the treble clef. This game would be an excellent summative assessment for the unit because it encourages students to quickly enter the correct answer for which line or space shows the requested letter. When they begin to play treble clef melodies on the Recorder, students will need that kind of quick decoding ability to transfer the notes they read into what they play.

    Before integrating this game, I will need to have spent two to three lessons helping students become familiar with the musical alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F, and G) as well as mnemonic devices they can use to remember er which letter belongs on the lines (Every Good Boy Does Fine) and spaces (FACE in the Space) of the treble clef. In my district, students are very familiar with Wordwall because classroom teachers of every grade level utilize games from the website. Therefore, getting the Third Grade students to log onto the website and search for this game should not be a challenge. However, before letting students log onto their computers to begin, I would initiate some practice rounds by putting a blank treble clef onto my NewLine Board and calling out a letter name. Students can then raise their hands to come and point to the line/space that shows the letter. This physical experience would help prepare students for the task the game will ask them to complete.

    For some students, remembering the mnemonic devices to decode the lines and spaces into letters can be tricky during this game. To support these students, I would provide a graph of the mnemonics for the lines and spaces for them to reference as they play. When the students no longer need the graph as a reminder, they can give it back to me and continue to play. This is the kind of "leveling up technique" that Gee & Shaffer (2010) argued teachers can use to help students find success with games. Even though this game doesn't have a "hint" option like others do, I can provide one for students who require it before they can move on to the next level.

    Wordwall makes assessing students as they play this game quite easy. On my end, I will be able to see the results of each student's most recent game and assess which components of the treble clef are strong and which ones need more practice. I will also see the current leaderboard of student's scores as they play. This information would allow me to see which students may need the scaffolding previously mentioned and which students might need a higher difficulty. To give those students a challenge, I can change the allotted response time on the game. However, the greatest affordance of this game is the opportunity for students to engage in self-assessment. As Abrams and Gerber (2021) argued is the case for many games, this provides real-time feedback on whether students located the correct letter. This information can help students assess which letters they need to work on recognizing, It can also help students create their own unique formulas for recognizing the letters. 

Works Cited

Abrams, S., & Gerber, H. (2021). Achieving through the Feedback Loop: Videogames, Authentic Assessment, and Meaningful Learning. Special Issues, Volume 1: Critical Media Literacy: Bringing Lives to Texts, pp. 120-128. National Council of Teachers of English.

Gee, J.P., & Shaffer, D.W. (2010). Looking Where the Light is Bad: Video Games and the Future of Assessment. Edge: The Latest Information for the Education Practitioner, 6(1), pp. 3-19.