Students Become Leaders! Including More Student Led Activities In A Large Ensemble Setting Elisabeth Sato Teachers College, Columbia University elisabethrsato@gmail.com
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ow might we encourage more leadership from our students within a traditional large ensemble setting? As an orchestra teacher at the high school level, this is a question I frequently ask myself. I would like to share with you some of the instructional activities I included in my traditional large ensemble setting last school year to create more leadership opportunities for my students in high school orchestra. I hope to give you some new ideas to try in your own teaching setting! Sectionals Sectionals provide a great opportunity for students to take on leadership roles, and many music educators currently have students work in sectionals. By dividing students by instrument or instrument part, they can focus on any tricky passages within that specific part. Principal players or section leaders can take the lead by facilitating the rehearsal, which may also encourage peer learning and mentorship, especially within a mixed grade and level ensemble. On days when we had sectionals, I might have all students rehearse within their sections simultaneously or have only one or two sections rehearse in sectionals while the remaining
students in the orchestra rehearsed as a whole ensemble. Mini Orchestra Mission To take sectionals a step further, I included a new activity in my teaching last school year that I named the “Mini Orchestra Mission” and was originally suggested to me by a colleague. Instead of dividing students by instrument or instrument part, students were assigned to a mixed small ensemble consisting of all parts in the orchestra. They were provided with a “mission,” (I assigned specific sections from our concert repertoire), and had to rehearse and record the assigned sections and submit the recordings electronically at the end of the class period. Having the students record their playing may have also helped with rehearsal productivity. Each time we did this activity, I would try and vary the ensemble sizes and change the ensemble formations so the students would get the chance to work with different members of the orchestra. The Mini Orchestra Mission activity encourages students to play more independently, and in a sense, become their own leader. Instead of relying on a whole section, only one or two students might be playing the same part. Students must also work together to identify problematic ar-
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eas, rehearse their music together, and evaluate their own playing. By strategically forming the mini orchestras, you may even see new students become leaders! This activity was also very informational for me as the teacher because I could get a better sense of areas in our music that might require further attention. When I listened to each mini orchestra’s recording, I could hear specific sections in the music where students had trouble and use these recordings to help guide my own instruction. I would focus on these areas when we met again as a whole ensemble, or if I noticed a pattern in a specific instrument part, that area could become the focus for sectionals or small group lessons. Student Conductors Having students conduct gives them the chance to lead the entire ensemble and also learn a new skill. For an annual performance, the orchestra has performed the same tunes every school year. Since most students were quite familiar with these pieces, I decided to offer the upperclassmen the opportunity to conduct the performance since they were the most familiar with the tunes. I made a list of some of the tunes and created a sign-up sheet where JANUARY 2020
