Lisa Mandelstein and I reviewed and revised our spring Makery/Music collaborative unit which began in 2015. Prior to COVID, this activity coincided with a student concert offered by the San Francisco Symphony. Students explore families of musical instruments in the orchestra. By making their own instruments, students experimented with sound production and deepened their understanding of a variety of musical concepts.
We shared highlights from the 2022-23 unit and areas for improvement. We intend to revisit the symphony for a field trip this year, and are awaiting an announcement on the concert dates. There is also the possibility of inviting guest musicians to perform at school if this is not offered. One concern was having enough class time for students to build instruments from each family, and how this fit within other spring curriculum the first grade has scheduled. We decided to move our Percussion Instrument lessons to October, which creates a opportunity to record Halloween or spooky sounds with percussion. The activity with other instrument families would continue in the spring. Additionally, we discussed ways our String instrument-making activity can better emphasize the creation of different pitches by tightening and loosening the strings.
The attached document contains our lesson plan and tentative schedule for the 2023-24 school year. It was fun to revisit this exciting unit on instruments and propose ways to make it even more impactful for our students.
I love reading about the history of this project and how exciting that it can once again connect to the SF Symphony! Very exciting!