Emily Hornbake

This project was a fun way for my students and I to explore various styles of music within The 3-Minute Nutcracker. Students were able to make cross-curricular connections, hear various examples of the music, think critically about their musical choices, and discuss the music conceptually. Hopefully, they will be able to apply their knowledge when playing similar music in the future.

 

It was important to me that this project be primarily performance based, and that all discussion related back to how we will present this music at our concert. However, I found it challenging to switch gears from watching a video to discussing a concept to performing it on our instruments. As I reviewed my tapes, I noticed that the pacing in some of my lessons was quite slow, and resulted in students losing focus. I think I can improve this in the future by considering the following options:

 

• Have all audio and visual material prepared ahead of time. This was not always possible due to the way the projector is set up in North Central's orchestra room.

 

• Choose material that students find engaging, and give them something to think about while watching the video. I found that students responded best to an excerpt of "Trepak" from the television show So You Think You Can Dance. Before I showed this clip, I asked them to consider how the dancing reflects the music, and what this means for us.

 

• Don't try to take on too much in one day. On Tuesday, I rehearsed sections of "Waltz of the Flowers," showed a video of a waltz, discussed it, and then tried to implement a waltz style to the movement. Even for high school students, this was too much of the same thing for one lesson. Learning from this, I chose to rehearse part of "Trepak" on Wednesday to work on technical aspects, and saved our style lesson on this movement for Thursday. Splitting up rehearsal in this way was much more effective; students were able to focus longer, produced better and more thoughtful work, and also had more fun!

 

One of my students who participated in the recorded formal assessment asked me the following week, "Are we still doing the recordings this week?" When I told her no, she was sad, and explained that she liked doing it because it gave her a performance goal throughout the week. I thought it was interesting that although the recording was ungraded, it still served as a motivator to do well. In the future, I might consider using un-graded recordings as a way to motivate students. Perhaps there is something about committing one's playing to permanence that will make some students want to put in more effort.

 

Collecting and analyzing data throughout the week gave me a taste of what it might be like to conduct an action research study in my classroom. I think that recording students throughout the week could be a valuable tool for analyzing effective teaching strategies. So often we listen to the ensemble as a whole, but I think that examining the achievement of individual students is often overlooked in the orchestra classroom. This method could provide insight into how much information individuals retain across lessons, and also how many in-class repetitions are needed to commit a concept to memory.

 

This project was an excellent experience for me in terms of planning lessons and units, exploring creative ways to teach musical concepts, utilizing resources effectively, and facilitating student learning through inquiry. I look forward to adapting this experience to my own future classroom.

 

Videos

Below, enjoy video compilations of our initial and final performances of each movement as an ensemble.