How I use Flat for Education in my orchestra classes

 

Get FLAT for EDUCATION accounts for you and your students HERE!

I love Flat for Education.  There are so many ways to use it as teacher!  I can't imagine not having it.  I've been purchasing student accounts for each one of my students every year for the past 3 years.  At first, I had students login occasionally to play around with notation, composition, or complete a rhythm assignment.  The more I use Flat, the more uses I find for my students.  This year when I announced to my students that I purchased them Flat accounts, they cheered and thanked me!  Flat has helped me inspire students to create, explore notation, enter composition contests, and practice more.  And student accounts are a great price...only $4 for an entire year.

How do I have time to use this in my beginning and year 2 classes?  Well, every Thursday, I use 20 minutes of class as 'FLEX TIME.'  That is when I pass out missing work to help students raise their grades and give some students extra help when needed.  Most students do not have missing assignments, so I want to give them worthwhile things to do during that 20 minutes.  It is the perfect time for students to use Flat....for creating. learning, OR practicing!

Here is how I have used Flat for Education with my students so far this year:

1. Have students explore music composition (and develop music notation/note reading skills) by experimenting with various instruments and sounds.

In my school district, we use Canvas and Flat.io integrates wonderfully with Canvas (and Google Classroom if you use that).  Students simply click on assignments I create in Canvas and it automatically connects to the accounts I purchased for them.

For their first assignment, I showed students a simple composition I wrote using Flat (where I used some Star Wars sound effects...it's one of the instrument choices!).  I demonstrated a few basics...like how to choose instruments and add notes to the score.  Then I turned students loose and let them explore and create without any strict composition rules.  This is how students were able to become familiar with the program.  It's quite intuitive, so even my beginners picked it up very quickly.  When I introduced this program to my beginners this year, they hadn't learned to read notes, yet.  That did not hold them back at all!  They explored how the staff worked...how to make notes higher and lower using the arrow keys.  They played around with various rhythms and they were able to listen to their creations to hear how changes in notes/rhythms/articulations symbols work.  They were SO proud of their compositions and wanted me to hear each one!  They wanted to create for an entire class period, so I let them.  ;)

Here's a sample from a student:

Students were so excited about their composition they wanted to do more!  Many have spent time on Flat home because they enjoy it so much.  I noticed many of their compositions were pretty random...with no real melodic elements.  So...that gave me an idea for our next assignment...

2.  Students were required to write a piece of music THEY could play on their instruments.  I gave them specific parameters for their compositions.  They had to write music for the instruments they play in my class.  They had to make their composition at least 8 measures.  They had to change the key signature to 2 sharps (I showed them how and helped them set up their score).  They had to begin and end their piece with the pitch D and could only use 4 rests total.  They had to only use quarter notes or half notes (rhythms they could play).

The result?  Students made melodies. They created something they could play right then on their instruments.  They put on headphones and played along.  If they couldn't play it fast enough, they adjusted the tempo.  What a way to have students work on notes and intonation!  Since my beginners don't really know notes, yet, I have taught them how to have Flat put the note names in the note heads.

Here's a sample of student work from this assignment:

3. Students put music into flat as a tool to learn notes and practice/play along

Since we did the previous assignments, some students have found melodies/songs they want to learn to play and put the notes into flat.  They change the note heads to include note names and they have been motivated to practice all sorts of music!

Some of my 'advanced' beginners have been learning a challenging version of Twinkle Twinkle.  Some of my new beginners put the notation of the advanced part into Flat to see the note names...and have learned the advanced part.  They adjust the tempo and play along.

My beginners are performing 2 pieces I wrote using Flat for our next concert:  Spooky Night and Tip Toe in the Dark.  I shared the scores with my students using Flat and they can view their part and play along with the recordings.  They love practicing that way...and it helps them practice maintaining a steady tempo.  Sometimes we play along with the audio in class, too!  My students have learned how to show just their own instrument in the score so they can focus on their own part.  Also, they can adjust the volume options to isolate their part as needed.

4. Students build triads and write a melody using notes from the triads.

A couple years ago, Christian Howes visited my program and had students work with 'chord stacks' to play variations of a familiar tune.  Students chose what notes to play by looking at the chord stacks.  This inspired me to create a composition activity for my year 2 players.  First, I made a simple chord progression (the same from Canon in D).  I used whole notes and built only the root of each chord.  I then taught students how to build triads (I called them snowmen at first..haha) on top of the root.  After they built the triads, I taught students how to add an instrument to their score and write a simple melody using only the notes from the triad.  My students were AMAZED that this worked to help them create music that sounded good!  Previously, they had explored writing music with Flat, but they had a hard time creating parts for more than one instrument that sounded harmonious.   Their compositions sounded awesome.  Several students came up to me after class and said, "Thank you SO much for teaching us triads!  I am so excited to write more music!"

Here's a sample of student work:

My school has a Reflections contests sponsored by the PTA (as many districts do across the country).  Students are allowed to submit a music composition.  These few lessons we did in class inspired students to enter that contest.  Many students are working on creating music to play with friends. They are thinking more about chords and harmonic structure. 

After these few assignments, students have a better understand of how the staff works.  I can keep teaching elements of composition and form to help them continue their learning of the language of music.

Get accounts for you and your students HERE!

Halloween inspired rehearsal game

 

I found this cool Halloween decoration for my home...and I've been looking at it thinking I'd like to use it in class one day for a rehearsal game...  I bought some eyeball bouncing balls from WalMart and I put one of each color (pink, blue, green, orange) in each caldron.  Students will pick a caldron, then choose an eyeball from a caldron.  The color on the eyeball dictates the challenge we will work on in class.

Here's the link:  SKELETON

Here's the link: EYEBALLS

You don't have to have a prop like that because I made the entire thing in Canva!  It's also customizable so you can change the text to work for the music and skills you are doing in your own classrooms.  Check it out! 

CLICK HERE to play my game (no Canva account required)

CLICK HERE for a template to make your own version (Canva account required)

Games to reinforce rehearsal procedures and playing skills

 

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.

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:

Isty Bitsy Spider Halloween note reading activity

 Here's a fun way for beginners to practice the song 'Itsy Bitsy Spider.'  Let them figure out the notes and play it to see if they wrote the notes correctly!  Includes parts for violin, viola, cello and bass!

FREE HERE!

Free Halloween Music for beginning orchestra

 

It can to tricky to find music for beginning orchestra for a first concert in October.  My beginners can play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and they could use some practice at reading the notes we have learned so far.  This piece uses the same notes from Twinkles:  D, E, F#, G, A, and B.  The rhythms are easy and quickly learned.  Students learn dynamics, and they learn how to make a cool sound effect (pizz and slide).  I have included parts with regular notation for students who are fast at note reading and also parts with simplified notation (note names in note heads) for students who are still learning the staff.

Click here for the audio (there are some pizzicato notes in the audio that aren't quite accurate because they are supposed to be a sound effect...students pizz once and slide their finger up their highest string to make a funny sound...you'll see it in the score)

This is FREE!  Click here to download it today!  

The first 2 weeks of beginning orchestra

 

On Friday, my students finished their first 2 weeks of playing instruments.  They have been FLYING in their progress and I've been enjoying helping them learn and grow musically.  I started to think of all of the concepts they have learned and are practicing to refine so far.  It's quite a list!

1. Bow holds on straws

2. Bow holds on pencils

3. Bows holds on bows

4. Bow exercises

5. Instrument care

6. Instrument parts

7. Rest position

8. Instrument set up

9. Ready position

10. Play position

11. Pizzicato

12. Rock n rolls: bow placement

13. Bow weight, bow speed

14. Open strings

15. Arco open strings

16. Left hand placement

17. Placing 1st and 2nd finger

18. Drawing note heads, music staff

19. Note reading open D and A

20. Tune: Burnt Cross Buns

21. Tune: Mary Had A Sad Little Lamb

22. Tune: Sourwood Mountain - open strings with slaps on strings

I posted some pics and videos on Instagram to celebrate their progress and I felt like some people didn't believe my beginners were really learning/mastering all these skills ...that it wasn't possible.   These are the skills I have covered with my classes so far and we practice them each day.  Are all of my beginners doing each of these things to the level of 'professional' mastery?  Not always.  But you should see the videos. Are they making amazing progress?  YES!  I'm watching them hold their bows and I am proud to see most students with great form.  They are plucking their strings with good position because we practice it that way.  They are bowing on their strings with sometimes straight bows...sometimes scratchy...they are figuring it out. We are constantly learning and refining.  When I take pics and videos of my class, I'm excited when I see their results!  My students are motivated to learn correctly because I have taught them that it matters.  

When I make lesson plans, I use google slides to create my lesson flow and provide students with all the information, videos, content, and visuals.  I would like to share the slides I used for my first 2 weeks of playing.  I thought it would be useful for teachers to see how each lesson was laid out and what students practiced each day in rehearsals.  This does not mean my first 10 days of playing will look like everyone else's first 10 days.  I tend to have fast paced rehearsals with a lot of action/playing. We all teach in different circumstances, different age groups, varying schedules.  All of these things affect how much we can teach in each rehearsal.  I hope this provides some ideas for others as we work to teach our beginners to learn effectively.

Access my FREE FIRST 2 WEEKS OF PLAYING - Google slides outline HERE!

Fortnite for Orchestra - A Rehearsal Game

 

My students LOVE it when we play rehearsal games!  It's a great way to increase student engagement and focus on specific skills.  Fortnite is huge right now and it was really fun making this Fortnite inspired game.  I hope you like it!   

I designed the game in Google Slides.   It's fully editable - so teachers can change the notes, excerpts and rhythms as needed.  I used screenshots or 'music snippets' for each of those.  Best of all....It's FREE!

CLICK HERE  to access your free download

Empowered Note Reading for String Orchestra

 

I'm so excited...IT'S FINALLY FINISHED!  I've been working on this project for quite awhile and I can't wait to use it with my students.  My students do a lot of bell-work activities at the beginning of class and it's been working well to use that time for students to practice writing rhythms or note names.   It's a great way to help students learn notes...BUT...students need more than worksheets.  I have noticed my students get very good at writing note names and learning notes on paper.  When it comes to actually PLAYING those notes, the skill doesn't always transfer as quickly.  Students need practice to build note reading skills and that is what this resource is all about.  It's also about students taking on ownership and accountability for their progress.  That is why there are so many embedded self-assessments, questions for reflection, and multi-level parts.  I wanted to create something that could be challenging for students who had music/piano experience and those with none.  We can't expect all students to learn at the same rate, but we can help students work and progress on their level.  Also included in this resources are short pieces that can be used in performance.

Here the info and link to TPT!  CLICK HERE

Students need to PRACTICE note reading using a step by step process. This is a packet for beginning string orchestra and includes a 45 page book for violin, viola, cello, and bass (180 pages total!) This workbook empowers and motivates students to master note reading by utilizing student choice, multi-level parts, targeted practice, creative exploration, and self-assessment. AND, all strings are included in the resource! Violin and bass students practice notes on G, D, A, E. Viola and cello students practice notes on C, G, D, A.

FREE Warm up challenge for beginning orchestra

 

Do you know what students need more of?  CHOICE!  To motivate students, they need to develop ownership of their playing and progression.  One way to intrinsically motivate students is to provide options and allow students a voice in the learning process.  I just designed this beginning orchestra warm up game called WARM UP ROULETTE!  Try it!  Let me know how it goes.  

CLICK HERE TO PLAY!

(It's like a slide show, so viewing it works best from a computer.)

New music for VERY beginning orchestra

 

One thing I always wish for at the start of each school year is more VERY EASY beginning orchestra music for our first concert.  Our first concert is always at the end of October.  By that time, students are just solidifying note reading on the D string (perhaps some A string notes as well).  They have learned the standard rep all beginners have learned...Mary Had a Little Lamb, Twinkle, etc....but those tunes are so short (thought we often do perform those at our concert...there's time for them to perform everything they have learned!)   I also want them to learn a more substantial piece for their first concert.  At that time in their development, grade 1 music is too difficult.  I need music that is quick teach and enforces skills they have learned in their first couple of months.

Here are a couple of pieces I just finished:

1. The Champion (click title to view on TPT)

This piece uses only 5 notes: D, E, F#, G, and A.  The rhythms are simple.  Learning this piece will help reinforce note reading on the D string.  Dynamics were omitted on purpose.  You can use this piece to teach dynamics!  Let students decide when they would like to play soft or loud in order to 'tell a story.'  Notes on the page are slightly enlarged to help with note reading.  Score are parts for violin, viola, cello, and bass.

Here's the audio: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_bUYQnzxeBxmLGlCVQD-Y7gXljfCU7t/view?usp=drive_link

2. Night Quest (click title to view on TPT)

This piece uses only 6 notes: D, E, F#, G, A, and B. It's quick for beginners to learn because of the repeating phrases between the violin/viola and cello/bass part. Students and learn similar sections in unison, then put it all together.  Score are parts for violin, viola, cello, and bass.

Here's the audio file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d14ImMYZ_KebR7hDXDq8nQNdJ4yHCHwI/view?usp=sharing

Practice Challenge using Google Forms

 I've been working on creating this practice challenge to help my students finish learning one of our concert pieces: Lion Sleeps tonight.  I occasionally do practice activities in class for 10-15 minutes of rehearsal time.  This enables me to teach students how to practice, give them time to practice, and help them see the benefits of practicing (they can immediately hear/feel a different after these guided practice sessions).  Normally I made worksheets or games for guided practice time...but I had an idea to us a google form.  Students have to look at the music and answer some questions before they practice. Students are able to track and report their accuracy on their reps and reflection on their progress.  The music is all embedded in the form.  Students have to answer questions correctly in order to move forward on the form.

Check out a sample HERE and see what you think!