For some background on this, I teach 364 students each day in 6 class periods at one school. 4 periods of beginning orchestra and 2 very large class periods of intermediate (year 2) orchestra. On Tuesday this week, I had one class period that was extra wiggly and distracted. They had been making excellent progress and I considered them to be one of my best sounding classes until this week. As I reflected on what had caused this change, I realized it was because we needed to review rehearsal procedures. I don't find it very effective to lecture students about following procedures, so I created a couple games to reinforce policies, and also help students focus on the skills we were working on in class. These games went wonderfully and students want to play them again! All of my classes are back on track!
GAME #1: The Mean Game
I don't play this game very often because I do think it is a little mean and I don't want students to feel 'picked on.' If played in a trusting, friendly classroom environment, it is very effective.
You don't have to do this part, but since it's close to Halloween, I ran out to Wal-Mart and bought some devil horns. I dressed up like a devil wearing all black and fire sunglasses. It was hilarious to watch students' reactions as they came into class. They couldn't help but smile and be excited to find out what we were going to do.
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When class started, I explained to them that we were going to play 'the mean game' and that is why I was dressed like a devil. We talked about how when we were little kids, we would be mad when we lost a game and sometimes even rage quit. I told them about how it's hard to lose....but this game is evil because my job was to try to make them all lose. This helped set a good climate for the game. I didn't want students to get super sad if they messed up.
Students had to follow the directions/challenges/expectations on each slide and if they were caught doing otherwise, my TA would put a little checkmark on their name on my seating chart. (It helped to not have ME mark students on the seating chart as caught...I would recommend a student volunteer mark the names.) We did not let students know if they were checked off...that way they needed to keep trying since they didn't know if they were ever caught. My goal as the devil was to trick most of the class into making a mistake. I gave out prizes based on how many students were 'out.' (the prizes got better if more people were tricked and marked out).
This game can work for students of any level. I tracked beginning students on: Maintaining self-control in rehearsal (play on when directed, stop and start with conductor, follow directions promptly)
1. Following directions (students were instructed to do bow exercises with a student leader....I tried to distract them and follow me instead)
2. Bowing open strings - keeping bow hand set, bow strokes straight. Stopping with conductor. (I sneakily stopped playing now and then and they had to stop when I stopped)
3. Play only when directed. We practiced the D scale with a few variations. Students were only allowed to begin playing if they heard the command 'ready, play.' I tried to trick them by saying other words to start. We also practiced 'note jumps' (just playing 2 notes back and forth over and over) and students to stop exactly with me.
4. Playing the correct line of music -not getting lost. Students got WAY better at one of our concert pieces - Sourwood.
5. Playing ON the tapes: We played 'Boil em Cabbage' and 'Twinkle' to see if students were landing on their tapes
6. Raising hands with questions: I passed out new music: Tip Toe Concerto and had students look over and music and raise their hands with questions. They had great questions and all were engaged without distraction.
At the end of class, you might point out how well students worked and focused. Ask them if they played better during this rehearsal and ask what made the difference. My students quickly realized that following rehearsal procedures was necessary to make more progress each day. I used the same game with my Intermediate classes to reinforce rehearsal procedures. I just changed the things I was watching for each round to be specific to our concert music (bows matching, notes in tune, stopping with conductor, etc)
GAME #2: Orchestra Survivor
Here's another game I used this week to reinforce rehearsal policies and reinforce skills. I spent a couple hours creating ORCHESTRA SURVIVOR. It's very similar to the mean game...just a little different spin. We focused on many of the same skills, but instead of getting tricked or marked 'out,' they were trying to last to the end of each challenge. I used a stop watch to time each challenge and at the end, students wrote on their scorecards how long they were able to maintain the skills. It was difficult for students to track exactly how long they lasted on each challenge - so I will change this next time we play. I think it would be much easier for students to fill in their scorecards with a symbols (+ means they lasted the entire challenge, a check mark means they lasted more than half way, a - for less than half, and a 0 if they didn't last very long at all.)
I created slides with little video clips of survivor challenges from the TV show to introduce our challenges. We then practiced the challenges on the slides while students focused on 'surviving' or 'out-lasting' for the entire challenge. I used the same basic slides for my intermediate class...I just changed the challenged to include specific measures from our concert music.
For my challenge 5, I wanted students to just focus on NOT GIVING UP! We had a great discussion about feeling like an underdog and about how good it feels to improve and keep going, even if you get frustrated. (Insert your own personal underdog story here.) We worked on our new piece and students made so much progress because they played with increased drive and determination.
Access your own SURVIVOR TEMPLATE HERE.
Scorecard PDF's: Beginning, Intermediate
Here's a view of my beginner slides:
