It’s been a few weeks since we’ve posted any new reflections or videos about our violin program… but not to worry, many new developments have occurred, and we have just been a little backlogged with all the new material to report. Since the new year began, we have made several improvements to our weekly violin sessions at Atrium.

Smaller Cohorts

We are now meeting in smaller sections of 30 minutes per session; about 4-6 students per section rather than 8-10. This improves each class because we are able to give each student more individual attention, and the students receive more teaching time per capita. It also makes our collaborative learning activities more manageable.

Words of the Week

Each week we are now ‘theme-ing’ our classes using a Word of the Week. The idea came because we wanted to encapsulate each week’s lesson with one word, giving students the ability to define those words experientially.

This week’s word is “deliberately,” which Tyler defined as “doing something with purpose,” and how Beatrice defined as “being careful.” In violin class, this means that everything we do is decisive and with purposeful intent. When putting our bows on the string and preparing to play, we do so with exemplary posture (bunny ears holding the ‘carrot’, feet in the right position, etc.) and without making a single sound.

Student Portfolio Work

Our continued emphasis on reflection has resulted in multiple venues and opportunities for students to reflect. In addition to informal verbal reflection throughout the class session, we challenge students to express themselves in written and artistic forms. As described in these two previous blog posts (11/11/09 and 11/3/09), our unit and lesson plans are organized around the ‘Five Learning Processes’ framework (a.k.a. LQCPR—Listen, Question, Create, Perform, and Reflect). Though most of our previous written reflections have fallen into the last category, we are now starting to propagate the other sections too. In fact, we filed this week’s reflection activity under the Questions & Explorations section in student portfolios because of the explorative questions it poses:

• What does it feel like to play your violin with the bow?
• Did anything surprise you the first time you bowed your violin?
• What kind of sound or sounds would you like to make with your bow?

We have also started building time for our written reflection activities into our sessions. Part of this is more possible because our classes are now being taught in the Library. There’s an alcove that we use for the instructional portions of class, and then the students move to a large study table to write their reflections.

Multiple Entry Points for Rhythmic Study through Symmetry and Social Studies

In addition to using animals (zoo, monkey, buffalo, alligator) and Indian rhythms (cha, taki, gamela, takidimi), violin students are finding connections between  Violin students are using their school project heroes (e.g. Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, etc.) to explore the connection between word prosody and rhythms. More on this to come.

This was a good day. Everything went as smoothly as planned (thanks to Beatrice who was a great model in the dress rehearsal) and there were many great moments which I will share and reflect on.

I don’t know if it’s because of the holiday spirit or the emotions that come with the “end of the year,” but I am truly grateful for each person on our Music Plus Music Integration Team at Atrium: Beatrice, Randy, Michael, Linda, Susan, and Larry. When we arrived at Atrium in the morning, I was relieved to find all the student violins lined up in order. This made my job easier to tune and put the shoulder sponges on each of them, which did take about 20 minutes. Randy  worked on the PA system and setting up the two video cameras, one floor and one roaming. Michael made sure the each child has a foot chart and place on the risers.

After everything was all set up, Randy asked Larry and I to say a few words on video, in anticipation of the event. We had a good time, doing different takes and speaking from different angles. We even got to interview a violin parent who was nervous but super excited about the performance.

The whole Atrium Winter Solstice Assembly program opened up with the Explorers class, and I could tell that they were really excited as we stood in line to enter the Hall. But when they got to their violins, they immediately sat down (they still need to work on their listening skills as we told them to stay standing). After a few minutes, they held their violins in rest position and started filing on the platforms. I was a little nervous for them because they had no idea was going to happen in the next few minutes. Larry, Randy, and I had made some changes to our performance because we wanted to show the PROCESS of what we are going to do. So Larry opened with vocal solfege warmup with scales and short call and response segments. The kids responded and sang very well (they have such sweet soft voices!) and to my surprise and delight, Larry took the assessment one step further: instead of having them imitate what he sang, he pointed to syllables on the matrix and they sang the melody back. Amazing. Next, I did my segment with the rhythm cups and explained to the parents the purpose of this. The culmination activity was to sing Re and La in different rhythms shown by the cups along with a recording of Pachelbel’s canon. It was a great 3 minute show and we ended with the parents singing along to a Re scale and ending with a ringing “Cha….” I loved their finishing choreography!

I think some cool ideas to expand on this would be to split the group into teams and have each one sing a different rhythm that ties in with the symmetry unit. Larry also suggested having them pluck Re-La but sing the scale to Pachelbel. I want them to march so their inner rhythm is strong. So many things to work on and so very exciting! Next year we will definitely tackle the bows.

This will be a compilation video made by Randy this week which will summarize and zoom in on the key points of the violin pilot program. I think it was a big hit with the school, teachers, and parents. We look forward to more violin-ing next year!

Beatrice was back and we reviewed everything we knew from violin posture to lion hold to singing the matrix up and down. We also learned that the unit theme for math class was symmetry and asymmetry, and tried to integrate that idea into our violin lesson. First we discussed all the visual aspects of the violin — which parts were symmetrical and which weren’t? Then we talked about our feet and violin holding posture and what aspects of those are symmetrical or not. These kids were quick to observe the details and soon we learned that most things related to the violin are symmetrical.

Following the symmetrical theme, we introduced the idea of a symmetrical melody — a melody that sounds the same when sung both forwards and backwards. For homework we asked each student to create their own symmetrical and asymmetrical composition, which will be sung in class next Friday! Maybe all of them will end up on the hallway walls in school! It’s so exciting….

This week, since Beatrice was out of town, Randy and I had the pleasure of engaging the kids in some eurythmic activities  we think will help in their ensemble playing. We reviewed them on bunny ear bow holds, violin posture, and added a reflective discussion on their practicing over the past week. Some of my favorite comments were:

I really enjoyed the “crazy practice” because I could do something the wrong way and then fix it.

I liked doing the animal rhythms and marching the beat. It was fun.

We then asked them if they had any specific questions, and it was obvious that they had answers to everything! These kids are so smart! Next we had them talking about their drawings they made the week before about how playing the violin makes them feel. One boy said: “Playing the violin is like being sucked into a black hole. The black hole is actually music and whenever I play music, I feel like it’s powerful.” Wow, that’s all I have to say to that.

I know little kids love to do things with their bodies so we came up with the idea of marching the beat or pulse. We made sure to start at a slow tempo (speed) so that when the rhythms got more complicated, it was slow enough to understand and perform them. We mostly used animal rhythms: zoo, monkey, and alligator, and interchanged them with the African/Indian system: cha, taki, takadimi. The hardest part was marching the beat and clapping or singing the animal rhythm on top of the marching. It was tested their coordination skills but incorporating their bodies at the same time.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series documenting the Atrium School M+MI Program’s Violin Project. Documentation efforts, including this post, are being led by NewsBlog moderator Randy Wong.

One of the most exciting roles (I think) within a Music Learning Leadership team is the role of Documentation Specialist, which is someone charged with collecting, articulating, and making visible any evidence from the MLL team’s project. In other words, the DS will probably be collecting student work samples, interviewing other team members, gathering reflections (by students, teachers, or other team members), etc. and helping to compile it into a digital portfolio that really showcases his/her MLL team’s work. They also assist in the design of rubrics, student assessments, and classroom activities, with the purpose of skillful documentation in mind.

Last Friday was my first opportunity to collect documentation of our new M+MI violin project at the Atrium School. We asked students to reflect on the Music-Math Matrix ‘play & sing’ by drawing and/or writing. As each was completing his/her work, I asked each student to interpret his/her reflection for me. I then assembled some of their responses into the video below.

I’m looking forward to future documentation from this project!

NewsBlog Editor’s Note: This is the second post in a semester-long series by Jenny Giardina, a new CMIE Guided Intern working as Teaching Artist and Documentation Specialist for her internship at the Josiah Quincy Upper School in Boston, MA.  Our thanks to JQUS music teacher Laura Bouix for hosting Jenny’s guided internship.

I was anxious last Friday as the first class walked in and found their seats; I know from first-hand experience (as we all do) that junior high and high school students have a way of completely rejecting any idea that doesn’t immediately impress them. I wondered if they’d give my approach a chance and, fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

High school:

The composition exercise with the high schoolers was challenging; composition is never simple, regardless of who you are. Composition that requires an original approach to notation involves creativity that takes some time and a lot of thought. The class worked diligently the entire period and I let them continue past the point I had planned. I could see that what I had presented to them was going to take more time that I had thought, which is a great learning experience for me.

Some of the groups’ approaches to creative notation were more intuitive than others. We found out that assigning a line to an instrument and layering the parts (as you’d see in a full score) was a more clear spatial representation and allowed the second group of performers to better understand the original composition.

Some groups were missing students due to absence, which made the assignment a little more challenging for those who had to try to remember what their classmates had done the previous week.

We’ll continue this project on another day, and I think it’ll be much simpler the second time around now that everyone has a better idea of what it is we’re trying to accomplish. I can’t wait for them to perform!

8th and 7th graders:

When the eighth graders arrived and I began selecting students to come up for the walking/listening exercise, their terror of being singled out and put in front of their peers became painfully obvious. I finally convinced them to come to side of the room by promising them they wouldn’t have to do anything but walk (which I now know should have been the first thing to come out of my mouth). I decided to begin the exercise differently with the seventh graders and asked for volunteers. Almost everyone’s hands flew up and I knew it was going to be a very different experience. Sure enough, they seemed to enjoy the exercise and were equally creative in there “sounds we associate with…” lists. The 7th graders list for sounds you’d hear in a park was very impressive, and it looked something like this:

Sounds we’d hear in a park

1. dogs barking
2. kids playing/babies crying
3. parents calling to their kids
4. pigeons/birds chirping
5. sizzling hot dogs
6. leaves blowing in the wind
7. a trickling stream
8. basketballs bouncing

We followed with an open discussion about which instruments in the room could best imitate these sounds. After we’d figured it out, they played together and created this particular “soundscape.”

The 7th graders brought interesting sounds, although some were more thought-out than others. The bell rang before we had time to explore the activity any further, but we’ll definitely revisit it soon.

The 8th grade’s final exercise was to break into groups of four or five students and compose a piece based on the lists they made for sounds you’d hear at the ocean, a park, or in a forest. I walked around and listened to them while they worked and contributed when needed to help them get on/back on the right track. I heard some really great collaboration and leadership going on, which was one of my goals! Only one group had time to perform, but we’ll have them do it another time.

All in all, I think the day was a huge success and I’m thrilled to go back in a few days. I’ve completed the lesson plan for this week (think Halloween!) and I’ll be posting it here within the next day or two, so check back! In all of the excitement of the first day I completely forgot my camera, but there will be pictures in the very near future. And, as always, I welcome any questions or comments!

NewsBlog Editor’s Note: We are pleased to introduce to you Justin Stanley, a new CMIE Guided Intern working as Documentation Specialist for Larry Scripp’s Introduction to Music-In-Education course this Fall.

Professor Larry Scripp introduced a number of concepts this week in his class, “Introduction to Music-in-Education.” He began the lesson by drawing a matrix (as shown below) on the class blackboard and playing a recording of a piece by Bobby McFerrin. Professor Scripp, through nonverbal suggestion, portrayed the function of the matrix in the rhythm of the song, and added x’s in single cells to notate clapping or emphasis. Soon, the class was engaged in an activity in which we clapped along rhythmically to the piece in a unified perception of the function of the chart drawn on the board. Professor Scripp gradually added complexity to the exercise by using symbols to imply rhythmic groupings, words to apply to rhythms (antelope for a group of three, salamander for a group of four), and rhythmic solfege for the same.

The basic form of the matrix used in class to show the basic form and rhythm of the song.

After the exercise and a discussion of what we did, students were asked to compile a list of mental processes that had to be integrated to take part in the exercise. Among many conclusions, students realized that processes of permutation, symbol association, cycle recognition, and grouping and parsing were needed to actively participate. We found that these concepts and brain processes that we used can be applied to a number of different subject areas. This led Professor Scripp to make the following comment: “If music is a fundamental medium and model for teaching and learning, from the point of view of integration, you could say that it is a fundamental medium and model for integrating.” Because of the subtle complexity involved in the activity, Prof. Scripp was able to keep the entire class (perhaps completely subconsciously had we not been conservatory music students) in a state of Flow (as shown in the chart below) during which we were all listening, questioning, creating, performing, and reflecting. Through this lesson, we as students were able to experience some of the cornerstones of the MIE program first hand: shared teaching and learning concepts, and teaching and learning processes. The integration of all of the learning processes exhibited during this exercise can help students create and strengthen connections necessary for all kinds of education. The subtle complexity of this exercise and any number of exercises like it that integrate music and other curriculum can create and strengthen connections in the minds of any student. Complexity in learning and comprehension can lead to any number of paths for a learner of any age. This lesson pushed me to do two things: 1.    I worked on a new unit plan for my internship teaching brass players at a local upper school that incorporated the use of a matrix to teach solfege. The initial lesson went incredibly well, with students learning how to create their own symbols to notate rhythm and melody. I hope to incorporate the following aspects into the unit curriculum for integration: a.    MATH: unit, sequence, fractions, special learning b.    LANGUAGE ARTS: symbols, syntax/structure c.    SCIENCE: measurement, documentation, inquiry d.    HISTORY: timelines, maps, contextual history e.    ARTS: creation, spatial learning 2.    I decided to focus on flow theory and brain processes/anatomy for a research paper for another MIE class at NEC, “Learning, Brain Development, and Music,” taught by Lyle Davidson.