I created a reflection activity for my students. Basically just asking them a bunch of questions about what they saw in their personal data from the class Power Bi report. The goal was to incorporate math skills (chart/visual analysis, finding averages, comparisons), have them write using music academic vocabulary, citing primary sources, and of course some critical thinking, communication, and metacognition. The assignment was created and distributed in our OneNote Class Notebooks. During the design process for this activity, I used tables and colors to visually organize the areas where students would enter in their answers, and I embedded the Power Bi report right onto the page because that's how awesome OneNote and Office 365 can be. After the page was ready I distributed it out through the Class Notebook tools tab. Students were given a week to complete the assignment before I would start leaving feedback. On the first day I directed them to the assignment, explained it, answered questions, got them started, and then flipped my switch to facilitator mode for the rest of the class. For the rest of the week sometimes I would give them a little time at the end of class after we finished doing our daily music education stuff. Because of the awesomeness of Surface, OneNote, and digital ink, I was able to review and leave feedback late at night before bedtime. Some students got their math wrong, or didn't even understand what kind of math was required to find their average. Yikes(!), but whatever, I'm a teacher and this presented a teachable moment. Some of the questions at the bottom of the assignment that required critical thinking were challenging for the students, but I helped them out in person or with my OneNote feedback. Students were also allowed to revise and improve their work as much as they needed to.
After I was satisfied with their data analysis and reflection work, we moved onto the next step. Based on the numbers, what was their neediest performance technique? Was it Pitch, Rhythm, Articulations, or Tone? (Posture was excluded)
Meanwhile...
Now, while they were busy getting their research done, I was doing a little organization on my end for the next phase in this process. In my non-public Power Bi file I created a table that displayed my students, their average performance scores (from me), with a little conditional formatting thrown in. Looking at this table I started jotting down my students names in OneNote, organizing them into groups based on their lowest/neediest performance category. I kept the groups to 4-5 students, and I mixed up the instrumentation as best I could. I kept my percussion kids together in a group, since their performance technique differs from the wind players, and I also tweaked the groups a little bit based on student behavior, separating my chatterboxes.