Start with a StoryPMEA Summer Conference

July 22, 2013Sharon M. Potter

PMEA Mentor Program Chair

© Sharon M. Potter, 2013

Why stories?

• Framework for instruction in the artistic processes of Creating, Performing, and Responding

• Connect to other core subjects

• Develop 21st Century Skills

• Flexible in terms of music content

• History of music and story: Ballads, Program Music, Oratorio, Opera, Musical Theater, Movie Score, Multi-media

SAS Big Ideas

• The skills, techniques, elements, and principles of the arts can be learned, studied, refined, and practiced.

• Artists use tools and resources as well as their own experiences and skills to create art.

• The arts provide a medium to understand and exchange ideas.

• People have expressed experiences and ideas through the arts throughout time and across cultures.

• There are formal and informal processes used to assess the quality of works in the arts.

• People use both aesthetic and critical processes to assess quality, interpret meaning and determine value.

Types of Stories

• Porquois- Why stories

• Trickster Tales

• Fables

• Folk Tales

• Fairy Tales

• Myths

• Legend

Choosing Your Story

• Choose a story you and your students enjoy as you will be working with it for multiple classes

• Choose a story from a culture, a time period, a holiday or celebration which connects to the curriculum

• Choose a story that supports the musical concepts and skills you wish to embed within the story.

Sharing Your Story

• Telling with authentic music

• Telling with created music

• Combination of above

• Dramatization

• Puppet show or shadow screen puppets or theater

• Radio Show

• Video or movie

Parts of a Story

• Setting

• Characters

• Plot

Exposition

Climax

Resolution

• Moral or Lesson

Analyzing the Story

• Create storyboards

• Bio Poems, Internal Monologues

• Where would music enhance the story?

Some Possibilities

• Sing and arrange songs from the culture or time period of the story

• Play instrumental pieces from the culture or time period of the story

• Improvise sound effects to accompany the story, create a mood, or describe characters

• Create an overture, incidental music, and/or motives for the characters

• Arrange songs for instrumental accompaniment

• Listen to music from the setting. Compare and contrast. Choose examples to use in the telling.

• Use existing art work which represents the story.

• Create art work for sets, costumes, puppets, etc.

• Learn dances from the setting or time period and integrate them into your project

• Create sound carpets to poetry such as cinquains and haiku and integrate them into the telling.

• Create rhythmic pieces based on the moral or lesson of the story

• Involve the audience in the performance

Assessment

• Formative

• Summative

• Process

• Product

• Reflections

• 21st Century Skills

21st Century Learning

• Advances in technology

• Need to remain competitive in global society

• Our students’ individual and collective success will depend on having these skills and dispositions

• Our future success as music educators may depend on our ability to teach these skills and dispositions

• Many of these skills may be developed through the arts

Partnership for 21st Century Learning

www.p21.org

4 C’s

• Critical Thinking

• Creative Thinking

• Collaboration

• Communication

• Character- 5th C

Critical Thinking

“Being able to solve problems is really important in music class. When someone is absent or something else is different than when you practiced you have to react quickly to find someone to fill in or rethink what you are going to do because you still have to perform.”

6th Grade Student

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Creating

Evaluating

Analyzing

Applying

Understanding

Remembering

In the music classroom

• Design problem based activities that give opportunities to solve both presented and found problems

• Develop instruction which is project based and includes many opportunities for higher order thinking

• Design questions which are open-ended, encourage a variety of answers and for which there is no “correct” answer

• Encourage musical thinking

Creativity

“We had a lot of good ideas and everyone contributed something creative to the project. We didn’t have a lot of time to create the opera before the performance so we needed to keep working even when we weren’t sure what we were doing.”

6th Grade Student

Teresa Amabile’s Componentsof Creativity

• Skill in the domain

• Creative thinking skills

• Intrinsic motivation

Creative Process• Imagining

• Brainstorming

• Planning

• Making

• Evaluating

• Refining

• Performing

• Evaluating

• Reflecting

In the music classroom

• Provide opportunities for student choice

• Give students autonomy within structure

• Remember that everyone has the potential to be creative

• Remember that a creative teacher isn’t necessarily teaching for creativity

• Create a safe classroom environment where all ideas are valued

Collaboration

“I think collaboration is very important because you have to collaborate and work together to have a great anything. A performance is only as strong as its weakest collaborator or performer. With collaborating we would get nothing accomplished.”

6th Grade Student

In the music classroom

• Develop instruction where students work together in different groupings to solve authentic problems

• Encourage students to make compromises and to be flexible in order to accomplish a common goal

• The students share responsibility for the final project but students and teacher value the contributions made by each individual

• Develop collaborative cross-disciplinary units

Communication

“Communication is very important because without good communication the performance would be a mess. In music we can communicate in many ways without talking”.

6th Grade Student

In the music classroom

• Provide opportunities for students to articulate and present ideas in many different ways and for different purposes

• Provide opportunities for students to communicate using different technologies

• Develop listening skills in your students

Resources

• 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn. James Bellanca and Ron Brandt, editors. Solution Tree Press, 2010.

• An Introduction to Student Involved Assessment FOR Learning. Jan Chappuis and Rick Stiggins. Addison Wesley Publications, 2011.

• Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World. Heidi Hayes Jacobs, editor. ASCD, 2010

• Drive. Daniel Pink. Riverhead Books, 2009.

• Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sims. ISTE, 2012.

• Growing Up Creative: Nurturing a Lifetime of Creativity. Teresa Amabile. C.E.F. Press, 1989.

• Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative. Ken Robinson. Capstone Publishing, 2011.

• Punished by Rewards. Alphie Kohn. Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Questions?

smp327@msn.com