Project 5

Project-Based Learning

Throughout this activity, each student will assume the role of a choral director and think critically about how to improve a choral ensemble's technique with regard to technical aspects of group singing such as posture, breathing, dynamics, articulation, diction, balance, and blending.

1. Setting the stage with real-life examples:

By the time students are tasked with this project, they will have had quite a bit of experience on the other end of the choral rehearsal as singers in an ensemble. Using Padlet, students will recall and discuss the most common criticisms and corrections they can recall from their time as singers in a the choral rehearsal and what techniques they can recall employing to remedy these issues.

2. Students take on the role of project designers:

For this project, each student will step into the role of a choral director. In groups of 3-4 students, they will be given sheet music and listen to a series of examples of choral performances of that music with the goal of giving the choir feedback that would best prepare them for an upcoming choral competition. The feedback will also be demonstrated with correct technique by the student conductors via Flipgrid videos.

3. Discussing and accumulating necessary background information:

In Google Meet sessions with their groups, students will discuss which technical elements of a choral performance are important to think about while rehearsing for a choral performance, as well as which of these elements are most noticeable and important when preparing for an adjudicated competition.

4. Negotiating the criteria for evaluation:

The students and teacher will decide together how the final projects should be assessed. Criteria might include questions such as:

• Did the group of conductors consider the appropriate technical aspects of ensemble singing?

• Did the conductors give appropriate examples for the performers of how to fix issues within the context of the specific pieces of music?

5. Accumulating the necessary materials:

In the context of this project, students will need to use the score(s) of the musical piece(s) being performed, but they will need to know how to use the music in a way that is advantageous and makes it easy for them to give clear feedback to their ensemble. Thus, in this instance, students will be partially evaluated on their use of the necessary materials (e.g. did the conductors use measure numbers to refer to specific sections of the piece when demonstrating feedback?).

6. Students create their projects:

Students will create their projects using the "Team Up" feature in Spiral by collaborating on a presentation showcasing specific mistakes and technical elements they chose to improve in their choir's performance. They will also post to a Flipgrid showing how they would model corrections for their choir and include links to the videos within the Spiral presentation. Students will also be allowed to schedule a Google Meet during the creation of their presentation in order to discuss and plan more easily. Because of the nature of Spiral, it should be relatively easy to determine in real time whether students are contributing and who is working on which aspects of the technical corrections being made to the choir's performance. The Flipgrid videos will also showcase whether each student has a comprehensive understanding of the material.

7. Preparing to present the project:

Students will be able to have a conversation via a Google Meet session to determine whether it is necessary for them to rehearse their presentations. During their presentations, they may discuss details such as:

• which technical aspects of the music they chose to correct and what led them to choose those elements

• how they elected to model the technique to their ensemble

• which conductors focused on which techniques

• how their corrections related to the way they believed their choir would be adjudicated in competition

8. Presenting the projects

During this phase, students will be able to present their projects virtually using Google Meets and Spiral. Based on the way the student conductors choose to give corrections and critiques to their ensembles and how they model corrections via Flipgrid, the conductors' ensembles will be "adjudicated" using a rubric based on the scoring rubric from a real choral competition.

9. Reflecting on and evaluating the process

In a Google Doc, students will reflect back on the criteria from step four as well as the rubric used in step eight and determine whether they focused on the appropriate technical aspects of the choir's performance and which group of conductors was best able to hypothetically improve upon the performance in the assigned rehearsal videos.