Secondary Schools Resource
LOCAL HEROES CONCERT Post-Concert Activities
PRINCIPAL PARTNER: ACO COLLECTIVE
Contents REFLECTIONS ON THE CONCERT
3
CONCEPTS
4
THE HERO CURRICULUM LINKS
5-6 8
The Local Heroes concert performed by ACO Collective explores through music the life of a person from your town who has lived an exceptional life in some way. Our facilitator introduces students to the instruments of the orchestra before using musical storytelling to transport them back in time to learn about the life of their hero. Now that you’ve completed the pre-concert resources and attended the concert, work through these activities so that your students can create their own musical story.
How to use our resources Work through the Composition, Performance and Musicology resources to create your building blocks for musical storytelling. After you have seen the concert, revise the Composition activities and work through this worksheet to reflect on the story told about your Local Hero and then create your own story. Resources are suitable for students in years 7 to 12 and is relevant for the Australian Curriculum area of The Arts (Music) with cross-curricula links to English, Humanities and Social Sciences and Technologies.
page 1
Reflections on the concert What did you think about storytelling in music? Did it help you understand the music?
page 3
Concepts This sequence of activities builds on the concept of music telling a story through emotion, as demonstrated by the ACO. Students use their melodies they learned prior to the concert. Some revision of concepts used: Phrase A musical sentence. English is written in sentences: Music is played in phrases. Melody The part of the music that you sing: the main part. Accompaniment The music underneath the melody. Important, but not as important as the melody.
page 4
The Hero Revision A short session aimed a refreshing students’ memories.
Revision
Return to the work you did using the Composition resource. Discuss with students how they could you use the concept of Musical Storytelling to compose a piece of music.
Phase 1
The Hero
Phase 2
The Hero Students can use their local hero, choose their own hero, or create a fictitious hero for this activity. Students break into small groups and come up with a story about their hero. Their story should answer the following questions: WHO is your hero? What DIFFICULTY did the hero face? How did it end?
Who is your hero? page 5
Storytelling through Music
Storytelling
Phase 3
This section is left fairly open ended, as students will inevitably complete this task in different ways. A concrete scaffold is given below for students having trouble incorporating music into storytelling. Students move into groups. In their group, they need (at least) one storyteller to speak while other students become musicians to put in the music and sound effects. Students move to instruments. They combine their story about their hero with their composition. Students are to tell their story about their hero and use music to illustrate. Students can use the music they performed last lesson as a starting point, or may choose to come up with something new. Students may use this scaffold: “Our Hero is …” (short melody for their hero) “One day, our hero … (faced a challenge) Music plays reflecting the challenge, perhaps adding sounds effects through the story “Our hero beat this challenge by …” Short heroic melody to finish. It is up to the students and teacher how complex this story becomes. Don’t forget to give your composition a title!
Students perform their compositions for the class.
Performance
Phase 4 page 6
The teacher may like to scaffold a reflection after the performances finish. Were the students nervous? Was it easy? Was it difficult? Which part of music did you enjoy the most? Why? Additional task: Next time you go to the movies, listen to the music. Someone is telling a story through music, just like the students did.
General capabilities and curriculum links Teacher’s Notes for reference to the Australian Curriculum: The Arts. This table identifies general capabilities and cross-curriculum links for pre and post concert lessons sequences.
General Capabilities Critical and Creative thinking (CCT)
English
Personal and Social Capability (PSC)
Humanities and social sciences
Intercultural Understanding (ICU)
Technologies
Literacy (LIT)
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Cross Curriculum Links
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PRINCIPAL PARTNER: ACO COLLECTIVE