The group of students I worked with for this particular set of lessons is comprised of students from Choral Ensemble. Choral Ensemble is the top-level auditioned SATB choir at the high school. To be in Choral Ensemble, a student must demonstrate advanced sight-reading skills and vocal quality. The students from Choral Ensemble who participated in this project volunteered their lunch hour to participate in this Series of Lessons.
For the fall concert, all choir students performed a modal canon with an accompanying ostinato that I composed. The students also learned a round of pop songs that all use the same three chords. These particular students participated in a critical analytic discussion of how the chords and bass lines of these exercises interact to create the end result. The students have also critically looked at videos of song mashups and a capella arrangements of pop songs. Additionally, students learned four chords (C Major, G Major, A minor, and F major) on the ukulele and looked at examples of songs that use these four chords. Finally, I created a demonstration track of what their final project may sound like and we as a class analyzed the various techniques and elements I put into my example mashup arrangement.
The main learning goals across the Series of Lessons include:
- Understanding what chords are and what a chord progression is
- Understand how the same chordal structure can serve as the basis for a variety of melodies and songs
- Ability to synthesize their chordal knowledge with their ukulele, singing, and harmonization skills to create their own mashup arrangements that they can showcase to their peers
Through the course of the Series of Lessons, students engaged in creating through exploring vocal harmonization, creating a vocal arrangement of a pop song verse, and arranging a mashup synthesizing a variety of skills. Students engaged in performing when they shared their vocal verse arrangements and their final mashup arrangements with their peers. Students engaged in assessing their creative processes in a variety of ways. Students critically discussed what they heard in a capella and mash up videos. They were also given a checklist for their verse arrangement and final mashup arrangement and then assessed how well they adhered to the checklists for both of these activities. The students also created a plan for their final arrangement in a Google Doc so that I could see their thought processes. Finally, they engaged in a discussion of each other’s performance and participated in a unit reflection Google Form.
In the first lesson, students learned about various methods of vocal harmonization. This can be seen in the video when students created a vocal arrangement of a pop song verse. If I were to do this lesson again, I would explore other ways to add vocal harmonies (such as vocal percussion or a cappella techniques) to provide students a more comprehensive understanding of harmonization and vocal arrangement. I monitored their learning during this lesson informally and as well as through the use of the vocal verse arrangement checklist. In the second lesson, students were assigned the mini mashup arrangement project which they had small group time to work on, which can be seen throughout the second portion of the video. During this lesson, I adjusted the required checklist from “must include ukulele” to “must include ukulele, piano, guitar, or some other instrument” to better meet my students strengths. If I were to do this lesson again, I would provide more time for this portion, which I ultimately ended up doing anyway. I informally monitored student learning during this lesson. In the final lesson, students successfully created their final mashup arrangements. This can be seen in the Lesson 3 section of the video. I monitored student learning during this lesson by checking students' adherence to the mashup required elements checklist and informally during our large group reflection discussion.
|
|
stp_packet.pdf | |
File Size: | 125 kb |
File Type: |