Strategies for Teaching Expressive Performance

Performing music is one of the fundamental processes of music education.A musical performance includes not only singing or playing accurate notes and rhythms but also making interpretive decisions to convey music expressively.As a seasoned music teacher who is trying to teach the National Arts Standards with fidelity and imagination, I realized that although I am very experienced in guiding students to accurate performances, I have less in my instructional toolbox to help students become expressive performers.After identifying this problem of practice in my classroom, I researched to find out the best strategies for developing expressive performance, and then created a lesson plan to explicitly teach students how to perform expressively and assess their expressive decisions.