Literacy and Fluency

In my classes this year I am emphasizing the need for "fluency".  Thinking in terms of understanding music, I am encouraging my students to go beyond general knowledge and the basic "I get it" to building the necessary skills to be fluent in using the general knowledge and applying the understanding.  The AP Music Theory students are loving this concept!  As they work on major and minor scales, and on recognizing and naming intervals they are realizing that until they practice these skills and concepts they don't know them well enough to be able to move up to another level of applying these skills to building tonalities, to writing and analyzing scores, and to being able to "hear" with their eyes and "see" with their ears.  Our new mantra is "Hear, Sing, Notate"! and we are inspired to do more, to practice more, to become fluent.

As I reflect upon building these lessons for my students I realize that this is the very literacy  -- or FLUENCY --  which I desire for myself.  Building skill upon skill creates the very desirable state of being fluent in that discipline.