By: Nicole Cody, Orchestra and Music Theory Below is an outcome and strategies/assessments from our current unit in Music Theory. I think this part of this unit displays some of the ways I use learning together, metacognition, real world assessments and making connections for new learning in my classroom. We are studying a movement from the Mozart Missa Brevis that Jason's choirs and my chamber orchestras are collaborating on for a performance in March. This is my "affective" outcome. I work hard to make sure I'm teaching more than just skills and knowledge in both my orchestra and Music Theory classes. Sometimes I think it is difficult to connect to the "real world" when teaching abstract materials, but the more deeply I study a piece before I teach it, the more I find meaningful connections that relate to other subjects and our overall understanding of the world and our place in it.* Outcome: "Students will reflect on the relationship between the movements in music and our understanding of life’s chapters." Strategies/Assessments: 1. Assign students to bring in the most recently read or favorite chapter book. Write down the main point of each of the first 5 chapters. Why did the author separate those main points into separate sections? Do they connect or are they totally separate? Linear? Topic related? Other? 2. Listening exercises (learn collaboratively)- Are these parts of the whole? Students will listen to select movements from various pieces of music from different eras, styles and composers and decide: Are these parts of the same whole? Why or why not? What musical evidence supports your answer? 3. Assign each student one of the other movements of the Mozart Missa Brevis. Ask them to extract the most important melodies, and list other important melodic material, rhythmic material, compositional techniques: anything they think might connect to another movement. Discuss as a class what "threads" unify this composition. 4. Your life’s chapters: 1. Think about your parent’s (or a sibling) lives. Chart an approximate timeline. Fill in as many details as you can. Where would you say new chapters opened and closed in their lives? 2. Chart your own life’s chapters. How would your chart change if you were sharing this with a family member, with your best friend? Reflect: Was it easier to chart your life or your family member's life? Do you think your family member would chart their life different? How can we use this understanding of self-perception vs. outer-perception to understand a composer's work? * Bold added by Allysen because I wanted to say "Love this!".
6 Comments
Kathryn
2/7/2018 12:44:31 pm
Wow Nicole - this is incredible! Perhaps we should sometime partner cross-curricular with this lesson :) This is great stuff!
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Nicole
2/8/2018 06:21:05 am
I would LOVE that! I'll repeat this unit next year with a different piece of music. Let's chat!
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Shannon Horton
2/8/2018 06:45:40 am
I'm with you, Kathryn, this is brilliant and working together could result in some really great writing and reading opportunities. Let me know if you need my help! Nicole, would you be willing to open your classroom to let other teachers observe (i.e. pineapple)?
Andrew Ellingsen
2/8/2018 04:21:40 pm
I love the idea of a cross-curricular collaboration! I'm sure an instructional coach would be happy to help with any logistics needed to make that happen!
Nicole
2/8/2018 08:19:06 am
Shannon- absolutely! The unit is currently going on. If you want, we can talk about an open classroom sometime in the next 2 weeks, if that is enough warning time, or the next unit will have some similar strategies, I'm sure!
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Sarah
2/11/2018 03:39:37 pm
I love all of this! And, I think the collaboration between departments is AWESOME! Thanks for being an awesome Decorah teacher, Nicole!
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