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Option 1: Provide/Describe one or more examples of adapted or alternative assessments you have successfully used in the music classroom for students with disabilities. Be sure to identify the student's disability. Share your response in the threaded discussion.


This past school year I had a student who broke his arm and had a physical disability for several weeks in my Orchestra class. Because of his injury, he was not allowed to play his cello with a bow during the time that he was healing as his right arm was the one that was broken, and he would not be able to use his bow arm safely. This was in a beginning level orchestra class and during this time of the year we were learning the finger placement of new notes on our instrument, and we were also learning more about rhythms and recognizing and incorporating dynamics through our playing. In order for the student to still be able to participate in learning and for me to be able to assess their understanding of the concepts, I made several adaptations for him and used alternative assessments. One adaptation was to have him show me how he could recognize where to place his fingers on the fingerboard with just his left hand as that hand and arm was not injured. It worked well that he played the cello as that instrument could just lean on him and did not require him to hold it up like a violin, viola, or bass. An adaptation I made to allow him to practice rhythms and dynamics on an instrument was giving him a drum pad and one drumstick that he could use with his left hand/arm only since it was his right arm that was injured. The student was able to demonstrate their understanding of rhythms and performed them using the single drumstick on the drum pad. The student was also able to practice dynamics by controlling how loud or softly they hit the drum pad with their un-injured arm. I also specifically placed a peer next to them who played the cello so that from time to time, the student could watch their partner demonstrate how this new knowledge transferred over to the cello and the student could feel more comfortable with eventually performing these techniques on their cello once their right arm had finished healing several weeks later.

Mneumonics: music teachers sometimes use mnemonics to introduce rhythm patterns to students. For example, a quarter note might be represented by the word "truck". Four quarter notes would sound like "truck, truck truck, truck " An adaptation for a student with a speech impediment would be to use a word that the teacher knows this student pronounces well, perhaps "bear". That would allow the student to participate in the music making activity without drawing attention to that student.

Task Analysis: This would be great for teaching improvisation. Teach the student the first pitch of the key. Have the student perform with the rhythm section. When the student demonstrates they can play the one pitch with a steady groove, teach the student another pitch. Now the student has two pitch with which to improvise. Continue this process until the student is using the desired number of pitches in a variety of patterns.