The Choir Director Corner Podcast
The Choir Director Corner Podcast
098. Using Choir March Madness to Cover National Music Standards!
As choir directors, we often find our teaching centered in the "Performing" set of the National Music Standards--it can be difficult to find ways to incorporate the "Responding" and "Connecting" sections of the standards. In Episode 98 of the podcast, I share with you how I use my Choir March Madness Listening Project to cover some of these "harder to reach" standards--it's a project you can use in a variety of ways to get your singers analyzing and discussing choral music!
And even better news--if you want to do your own Choir March Madness Listening Project, the work is ALL DONE FOR YOU! You can get your own Project Bundle over at:
choirdirectorcorner.com/choirmarchmadnessproject
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And hello, my friends. Welcome to the Choir Director Corner podcast. My name is Mount Walker. I'm your host. Thanks so much for stopping by and joining me for today's episode.
Speaker 1:So I'm recording today, on St Patrick's Day Hope you're wearing your green today and I am back from the underworld, otherwise known as show choir season Finally have that all wrapped up and put to bed. And while I'm thinking of it, I'm not quite sure how many of you out there have show choir. I know that's sort of different pockets of the country. I've talked to choir directors that are like, oh, yeah, like I have show choir and, yeah, it's a big part of my program. And then I talk to other choir directors that say I have no idea what that is, what, what, what are you speaking of? And so if you are out there listening and you have some ideas as far as some topics regarded to show choir related to show choir, I should say that you'd like me to talk about it on the podcast. Shoot me an email, matt, at choirdirectorcornercom, and I would be happy to cover those as well. But, yes, have that all wrapped up and just finished up, actually, with our spring break and so getting ready to get back into it for what I like to call the sprint to the end, or the sprint to the end of the year, and one of the activities that I like to do in March is kind of related to what you might be watching on your TV today, and that is March Madness. So today actually happens to be the selection show for the college basketball MCA tournaments, and you know, always referred to as as March Madness, and I started a number of years ago doing my own version of March Madness in choir, and what I've been doing is I make up a bracket, and the bracket, instead of basketball teams, it's filled with different choral performances, and so I've found all of these videos of choir performances and sort of put this into a nice project, and so we listen to them in choir. And then the students there's really no right or wrong answer. They simply pick the winners based on which piece they like more, and so they fill out their bracket as we listen to all these videos, and then at the end I like to go through and I will do one bracket that is sort of the official bracket and it's not my preferences, because then they would just try to choose what I like and I just want them to, you know, to be able to express what they prefer and what they like. But what I'll do is I'll go through and I'll just do a coin flip on every single matchup to pick a quote, unquote winner of each matchup, and then whoever's bracket comes closest to that sort of the winning bracket, then I do like a, like a $5 gift card to a local ice cream shop, and so that's a little extra motivation for them to fill out their bracket as well, so that they get sort of put into the drawing for that. So that is what.
Speaker 1:When I talk about choir March Madness, that is how I do things, and it occurred to me that by doing this project, choir Directors would be able to cover a lot of different pieces of the national music standards that they wouldn't normally get to cover right. So this is the NAFME music standards that I am referencing. I'm talking specifically about the high school ensemble national standards and if you're unfamiliar with those, you can check those, check those out online on their website. There's lots of different sort of categories and areas. So talking specifically about the high school level and the performing ensemble, so the different categories of standards you've got to create, you've got to perform, which we spend the vast majority of our time in, in choir, just naturally, yeah. But then you also have respond and connect and this project and I just call it, you know, sort of it is really a listening project, where they're listening, students are listening to these different performances. It really falls quite nicely into the respond and the connect categories and again, these are areas that we don't often get to touch on in in the national standards in our regular process, right, because we are typically very much, especially at the high school level, very much focused on those performance standards. So how can you use this March Madness listening project to hit some of these other standards? Well, let's talk about them really briefly here.
Speaker 1:So in the respond category, anchor standard number seven perceive and analyze artistic work, and so the enduring understanding is individual selection of musical works is influenced by their interests, experiences, understandings and purposes, and so they are very much sort of selecting musical work. It's not necessarily for performance, but they are sort of selecting musical works based on their preference, based on their interests and their experiences and, to some extent, their understandings, yeah, and so with each of these standards there's different proficiency levels. If you're familiar with these, there's novice, intermediate, proficient, accomplished and advanced, and so then you get into these rubrics. So, for instance, for this specific enduring understanding, the proficient listing is apply criteria to select music for specified purposes, supporting choices by citing characteristics found in the music and connections to interest, purpose and context. And so this is very easily done. As you were listening to these performances, just having a little group discussion with each one, you know I like to often do okay, show of hands, who preferred piece A right, and then we talk about why they had those preferences. And then okay, oh, show of hands, who preferred piece B and have them give some insight as to why they preferred that. And sometimes I'll even have students that change their mind based on those discussions. You know, come up with things that they hadn't thought of but another student thought of. So that's very easily done.
Speaker 1:Another enduring understanding in Anchor Standard 7, response to music is informed by analyzing context. So getting into social, cultural and historical perspectives and how creators and performers manipulate the elements of music. So here in the intermediate level, describe how understanding context in the way the elements of music are manipulated, inform the response to music. So now you're digging a little bit deeper right as far as the context, the social, the cultural and historical aspects of the music that you are listening to. And again, this could easily be done with just a little bit of prep work on whatever piece you might be listening to in class that day and just giving them a little bit of background, as you, before you listen to it, and have that then be part of your discussion and then talk about. Well, are there things that the composer did in sort of you know, as they say? You know, manipulating is necessarily like that word, but in their use of the different elements of music, are there things that the composer did to sort of bring to life those aspects, so social, cultural and historical aspects of that piece? So a wonderful opportunity for discussion there.
Speaker 1:Anchor standard number eight is interpret intent and meaning in artistic work, and that kind of gets into a little bit of what I was just talking about the enduring understanding. Through their use of elements and structures of music, creators and performers provide clues to their expressive intent. And then the proficient listening in this rubric is explain and support interpretations of the expressive intent and meaning of musical works, siting as evidence the treatment of the elements of music context when appropriate, the sending of the text and also personal research. So, as you're listening to one of these pieces of music, you could even give your singers the opportunity to do their own research on the piece and see how that then relates to what they are hearing, what they're watching in that particular video. And again, part of this discussion is what do you hear in this music as far as the elements of the music, the structure of the music, that the creator is then using to sort of further their interpretation and sort of their expressive intent and meaning of that musical work? Yeah, again, a wonderful opportunity for discussion and to really get your singers thinking about the piece of music that they're listening to.
Speaker 1:Anchor standard number nine, then, is apply criteria to evaluate artistic work, and essentially that's what they're doing in this whole project. As you know, as they are listening to all of these different pieces, they are sort of applying their own criteria, right, and criteria that maybe you have taught them as well as far as evaluating artistic work. They now get to take these as well as sort of their own perspectives, their own criteria, and apply that to what they are listening and watching. The enduring understanding here is the personal evaluation of musical works and performances is informed by analysis, interpretation and established criteria, and so the proficient listing here is evaluate works and performances based on personally or collaboratively developed criteria, including analysis of the structure and content. Well, here's another thing you could have really I bet it would be a lively group discussion on is having a group discussion and collaboratively developing criteria.
Speaker 1:What makes a great musical work, what makes a great choral music work right, what makes a great choral music performance right? And have them collaboratively develop a set of criteria and they don't have to adhere to that necessarily. But what if you had a group discussion before you did this project? Or maybe, as maybe you're doing the first matchup and let's say, hey, let's talk about what are some of the ideas that we are using to sort of choose our winners of each matchup? Right, and you know, digging deeper than just, oh, I just like that one better. Anytime I get that answer, my immediate response is well, tell me more. Or tell me why. Why did you like that one better? Yeah, and that is a key to these group discussions is never really accepting that surface level response, but always getting your singers to dive in deeper, yeah, and really get into some higher order elements of the music that they are listening to. So those are the standards for respond and again, you could easily tap into any of those to all of those doing this choir march madness listening project.
Speaker 1:Now the connect standards, those are sort of embedded in the other three areas, but I did want to talk about them just a little bit just to kind of see again how these pun intended connect to the other areas. So anchor standard number 10, synthesize and relate knowledge and personal experiences to make art. So the enduring understanding here is musicians connect their personal interests, experiences, ideas and knowledge to creating, performing and responding, which is what they are primarily doing here. And so in the proficiency levels it's all the same listing in the rubric for the connect anchor standards, but this one is listed as demonstrate how interests, knowledge and skills relate to personal choices and intent when creating and performing and responding to music. So that is almost just a natural thing that you're going to cover in the scope of this project, right? That's really one of the things that's at the heart of this whole thing. So you can very easily cover that in this project and the discussions that you have.
Speaker 1:Anchor standard 11 relate artistic ideas and works with societal, cultural and historical context to deepen understanding, and we very much talked about this in the respond anchors, but this is very much related to that. So really you're doing you know two with one right. By covering some of these response anchor standards, you're almost also almost automatically covering the connect anchor standards as well, and so the proficient listing in this one. Well, first, the enduring understanding, understanding, connections to very context and daily life enhances musicians create and performing and responding. And so then the rubric listing demonstrate understanding of relationships between music and the other arts, other disciplines, varied contexts and daily life. So you're even getting the opportunity to do some cross-curricular things as well when it talks about the other arts, other disciplines, as well as just relating what they are hearing to their own daily life yeah, and their daily life experience. So very easily done in the scope of this project.
Speaker 1:So I happen to do these where I listen to a couple each day and I spread it out, but there are lots of different ways that you could potentially do this choir march madness listening project If you don't have a concert that you are currently working towards, which is probably kind of rare most of us do. But I talked to some directors who do have some open areas in their calendar year. You can have your singers watch each video and fill out their brackets in class and just do these in consecutive days. Right, I've done it this way as well, and how quickly you work through the bracket depends on how much group discussion you do with each of these and then also, obviously, the length of your class periods, but you could theoretically knock out this whole bracket in several class periods. In each bracket I do 32 pieces. I know if you're familiar with the college basketball brackets there are 64, half that, yeah, minor 32. So it makes it a little bit more doable.
Speaker 1:If you did just want to knock this out in a number of days and listen to these pieces in consecutive days, you could do that. Number two you could do one matchup, which is two videos each day in class, and that is kind of my plan with doing these With 32 videos in a bracket. That means you could spread the activity over 16 days if you were going to do all of these in class. I like to do it all in class, just because I think one of the biggest benefits to this project is the group discussion that you do about each of these pieces and sort of the insight that the students bring with what they're hearing, but also the opportunity to get them to really dig deeper, yeah, and think about some of these high level elements of music and the responses to that, and kind of get the opportunity to give them practice in responding and discussing and analyzing music. That is one of the huge benefits of this project. So by doing it all in class, you get to do all of that.
Speaker 1:Now you could also do one matchup in class but then assign your singers to listen to the other three matchups in that region, as it were, of the bracket, as homework. So you could pick there's four matchups in each region. You could pick one of those, listen to those two pieces and then the other three matchups. You're like okay, your assignment for tonight is to listen to these other videos in this region and to pick your winners, and when you come back tomorrow I'm gonna ask you what pieces you picked and why. Right, and so what this does is it gives you a sort of the best of both worlds. Right, you're doing some of it in class, you're doing some of the discussion in class, but you're also then taking care of some of it outside of class as well, and so, theoretically, you could finish this up in four days, right? And you're also not taking up all of the rehearsal time listening to all of the videos, right. You can listen to two of the videos, do some discussion, and then you've still got time to rehearse whatever music you happen to be working on, right, so you can take that approach as well. The downside with this approach is, again, you miss out on some of that opportunity for that group discussion in class, right? Maybe what you could do is just simply doing a Google form and say, hey, tell me about what were your three winners, your other three matchups that you listened to, what were your three winners of those matchups in this region and why? Right, and you could do just a bit of a reflection that way if you wanted to take this approach and save yourself some time in rehearsal.
Speaker 1:Something else to consider is that this listening project would make a great resource to use as subplans when you have to be away from class. All your sub really has to do is, basically it's the technology piece of it, right. However, you are projecting these videos so that your class can see them as a group, whether it's through a projector onto like a drop screen, or whether you project it through sort of a large screen TV. However, you're doing that. That is the biggest piece to this right you can share the Google slides with them. I do all my videos. All of them are embedded in Google slides and so then, by doing it that way, there are no suggested videos, there are no ads, there's none of it. It just goes right into the video for the singers by having those. They're all videos from YouTube having those in that Google slides presentation. So that's really the biggest piece. So it's a great thing. If you wanted to spread it out over the course of the year, you could even do it that way, right? Or if you've got a couple of days where you have to be gone for it conference or something like that and you need something for your sub, this is a great project for that.
Speaker 1:Another option for this project is to do it during a different time of year. You know, I've done March Madness, I've done April Anarchy, I've done May Mayhem. You know, come up with your different words, right? But many choir directors talk about how they really struggle to find things to do with their singers at the end of the year where, like our, you know, our last concert is the second week of May. Well then, what are you going to do for the next three, maybe four weeks of school? Right? This would be one example of a great project that would fill some of that time at the end of the year. So, or if you've got another time during the course of the year most of us don't, right, most of us are pretty busy, but you need you've got some extra time that you could do a different type of project. This would be a great project for that.
Speaker 1:Also, thinking about those of you that have block scheduling, where you've got an 80 minute period, what are you going to do for all 80 minutes? Right? This would be a great way where you could just do one match up a day, right, and that would easily. You know, depending on how much group discussion you're doing, I could easily fill 15 minutes easy of that block schedule. So, a great option for those of you on block schedule as well. Another thing to think about is the assessment piece of this, and I've talked a little bit about it, but I use it as a simple assessment piece by using a Google form at the end of the project where the singers reflect on what their favorite pieces were in this project and why and I make it very clear to them that the why is a very important piece of that. And again, it's just another way to get them analyzing, responding and discussing choral performances and using that all important music vocabulary. So lots of different things to consider, lots of benefits in doing this choir march madness listening project. So if this sounds like something that you would like to try in your choral classroom, the great news is that all the work is done for you.
Speaker 1:I have all of the resources that I use in my project available to you. I even have multiple brackets and multiple voicings. So for, like, satb, there's three different brackets. For TTBB, I've got two brackets. Ssaa I've got two other brackets for that. All of the Google slides, presentations the bracket is just made out on a Google sheet which you can have your students fill out electronically, or I do the old school paper and just have them fill it out that way. Even the Google reflection form, you've got a copy of that, even a form, the form that I use for, like the student instructions at the beginning of the project.
Speaker 1:All of that is put together available to you in one bundle, and you can find that over at choirdrictorcornercom.
Speaker 1:Forward slash choir march madness project, and I'll put that link in the show notes. But again, that's choirdrictorcornercom. Forward slash choir march madness project all one word. So you head over there and get your bundle, your choir march madness project bundle, and it's everything that you need to literally start your own listening project today with your singers. Again, it's just that tech technology piece. You just have the. You have to have the capability to project onto a screen so that you can all watch these choir videos together. Well, that is it for today's episode. My friends, I hope today's episode gave you some ideas as to how you might easily and effectively hit some of these national standards that you might not normally have the chance to touch on in your choral classroom. Thanks so much for listening and until next time, keep being awesome. Are you looking for resources that will save you time and frustration? Want to dive deeper into topics related to your teaching? Then check out the choir director corner community membership over at choir director cornercom. Forward slash membership.