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Subject

The Arts (1996)

Description

Students will be introduced to the four families of the symphony orchestra and many of the instruments that belong in each family. They will use the SMART Board to identify sounds, pictures, and words relating to the orchestra. They will sort instruments into families, match instrument pictures to their correct names, and identify "mystery instruments" based on their sounds. Students will also play several games to demonstrate their knowledge of the symphony orchestra, its instruments and its families.

Website(s)

NY Philharmonic Kids Zone
San Francisco Kids - Fun with Music

Objectives

Students will be able to name the four families of the symphony orchestra and identify several instruments through seeing, hearing, and reading. They will also be able to sort these instruments into the correct families.

Duration

One 45-minute period

Materials

• SMART Board set-up
• SMART Notebook file (attached)
• recording of Beethoven's 5th Symphony and CD player
• pencils & copies of guided notes to be filled out during lesson

orchestra lesson.notebook

guided notes.doc

Procedure

1. Students enter the room while Beethoven's 5th Symphony is playing on the CD player. They will listen for a few minutes, then discuss the instruments they heard, where they might hear this type of music, and the composer and title of the piece.
2. Record their ideas on the SMART Board. Introduce the term "symphony orchestra."
3. Present slide 1 and discuss the four families of the orchestra, playing a sound example for each family.
4. Using slides 2-5, discuss each family in more detail, explaining why certain instruments belong to specific families (for example, all brass instruments have a round metal mouthpiece, all string instruments have strings, etc). Students should fill out guided notes worksheet as these slides are discussed.
5. Present slide 6 and call on individual students to come to the SMART Board and use the line tool to connect a picture of their choice to the correct word.
6. Present slide 7 and allow more students to drag an instrument of their choice into the correct box labeled by families at the SMART Board.
7. Slide 8 will test the students' memory of the first sounds they heard from slide 1. They must listen to the sound by clicking the speaker icon, then correctly identify the instrument and the family. To check their work, the teacher or a selected student will reveal the "mystery instrument."
8. Slides 9 & 10 are games to assess the students' understanding of the instrument families. The directions are on each slide. For slide 10, it may be fun to have two students "face off" and see who can guess the correct answer the quickest.
9. Finish the lesson with a silly game of "Tomato-the-Teacher." The students choose letters to guess the word "orchestra."
10. As the students exit the room, play Beethoven's 5th Symphony once again.

Assessment

Students will use the SMART Board to sort instruments into families, connect instrument pictures to the correct words, and identify "hidden" instrument sounds. They will also play several games in which individual students must demonstrate their knowledge of the instrument families (SMART Notebook slides 9-10).

Related Academic Standards

National Coalition for Core Arts Standards

NAS.MU.Re7.1.2.a Explain and demonstrate how personal interests and experiences influence musical selection for specific purposes.

NAS.MU.Re7.1.3.a Demonstrateand describe how selected music connects to and is influenced by specific interests, experiences, or purposes.

New York State

ARTS.M.E.2.1.D Students identify the various settings in which they hear music and the various resources that are used to produce music during a typical week; explain why the particular type of music was used.

ARTS.M.E.2.1.E Students demonstrate appropriate audience behavior, including attentive listening, in a variety of musical settings in and out of school.

ARTS.M.E.3.1.D Students describe the music’s context in terms related to its social and psychological functions and settings (e.g., roles of participants, effects of music, uses of music with other events or objects, etc.).

ARTS.M.E.4.1.B Students identify the titles and composers of well-known examples of classical concert music and blues/jazz selections.