Week 7 — The Mid-Course Cumulative Check · Intervals Outward II

Course: MUS 155 Aural Skills I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 7 of 15 (Week 7) · two sessions per week
Objectives tested: SLO 1 (sing at sight) · SLO 2 (notate what you hear) · SLO 3 (identify by ear) · SLO 4 (reproduce at tempo)
Points: 34, in two gradebook rows — response part 14 (14 × 1) + hearing part 20 (rubric) · Group: Unit 7 mid-course check · In class, session 2, live stimulus, closed to AI. This check replaces this week's weekly skills check; there is no separate weekly one.

The import-ready item file for the response part is assembled by the build system from the Unit 1–7 item banks (two items per unit); _build/banks/lu-07.json holds this unit's eight check-eligible items and six pool items. This page describes the check — every stimulus exists only as session 2's live sound.

What it is

Seven weeks, one sitting, two parts — and no new kind of task anywhere in it. Everything below is a move you have made in the studio, most of them weekly since Unit 1. Your theory midterm is next week; this check sits deliberately a week earlier so the two never stack on one morning.

Part 1 — Response part (14 points, about 30 minutes, everyone together). Fourteen questions, two from each unit, every stimulus performed live by Professor Hemsworth from a fixed script. Grouping and meter calls, mode and minor-form calls, interval names narrow and wide, counting matches, degree calls, short dictations, and this week's additions: the tritone and its resolutions, inversion pairs, leap-mapping. Announced by number, fixed hearings, listen first, answer after — through the Canvas quiz tool on your own device, staff paper provided as scratch for the dictation items.

Part 2 — Hearing part (20 points, about 90 seconds, one at a time). At the piano corner: sing the prepared pattern you chose from the studio page (do is given), then read one two-bar melody at sight — thirty silent seconds to audiate, do given, sing. You'll sing your card from the do given at your turn — the tune on the page is the tune, wherever do lives. The same dials as every week of this course; the at-sight melody is not a trick.

Response-part blueprint

Wrong-answer options come from the real error classes — the ways ears actually slip — so an honest miss still teaches you something on the walk out.

The hearing rubric (20 points)

Criterion weights: perception 50 · realization 35 · labeling 15

A student who sings the right pitches with the wrong syllables loses only the labeling points. A student who sings the right syllables on the wrong pitches fails the item.

Any octave that fits your voice earns full credit, sung or played — the standing play-if-you-cannot-sing-today path applies, criteria unchanged; the rubric is neutral to timbre — tone quality is never scored, this week or ever.

Ground rules

Closed to AI, closed to notes, closed to neighbors — for both parts. Phones face-down except for answering. Nothing is written during any hearing; dictation items open for writing only after the first hearing, exactly as drilled. The response part is group-administered — everyone answers the same live hearings at the same moment — so it runs identically at four students or forty. While hearings run, the room works the silent prep sheet; the silence is part of the deal.

The rotation, in numbers: at a full section of 36, eighteen students are heard in session 2 and the remainder take posted office-hour slots around next week's single session — the order is posted in advance, nobody is ambushed. In a small section, everyone is heard session 2. You have already been heard solo at least twice this term; this is ninety seconds of the same thing, with points attached.

Absent for session 2?

Email Professor Hemsworth the same day. The primary make-up is a live administration in office hours — response part from the parallel stimulus set, hearing part identical, same scripts, same hearings. Where scheduling truly cannot work, the response part alone has a self-administered variant: recruit a musician who can perform short patterns accurately from a card; your partner receives the parallel performance cards directly from Professor Hemsworth (they never pass through your hands), performs each stimulus per its script, and signs the attestation line while you answer through the same Canvas tool. The hearing part is always heard live — a sung assessment cannot be self-administered, and it will be scheduled, not skipped.

Canvas placement block

canvas_object    = classic assessment + rubric assignment (two gradebook rows)
row_1            = "Unit 7 Mid-Course Check — Response part" · points_possible = 14 ·
                   delivered via the Canvas quiz tool · allowed_attempts = 1 ·
                   opens in session 2; live administration only
row_2            = "Unit 7 Mid-Course Check — Hearing" · points_possible = 20 ·
                   graded on the rubric above, entered by the instructor
assignment_group = "Unit 7 mid-course check"
published        = true