LESSON 3: Active Listening and Poetry

LESSON OBJECTIVE: Students will practice active listening by connecting how music impacts one’s mood. Students will listen to music composed by Tchaikovsky, and journal images, ideas, and emotions that they felt while listening. Students will make further connections by writing a short poem about the music or what they experienced.

DURATION: 50 mins

MATERIALS: Handout 4: Active Listening, Handout 5: Figurative Devices, access to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker (Spotify or YouTube), paper (or writing notebooks), pencil

STANDARDS: CCSS ELA/Literacy: LS 5 Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings. CCSS ELA/Literacy: Speaking and Listening Standards: SL 5.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners on Grade 5 topics and texts, building on other’s ideas and expressing their own clearly. CA VAPA MUSIC, Grade 5: 4.1 Identify and analyze differences in tempo and dynamics in contrasting music selections. Social Emotional Learning Competency: Recognizing one’s feelings.

CONCEPTS/VOCABULARY: Active Listening (music): What you do when you’re focusing on what you hear, for example focusing on the words someone is saying when you are having a conversation. Alliteration: Use of words with the same letter or consonant sound that repeats. Composer: A person who writes music by organizing sound. Dynamics: Varying degrees of volume in the performance of music. Imagery: The use of pictures/visuals to describe/paint a picture in words. Metaphor: A direct comparison. Onomatopoeia: Use of a word associated with a sound. Personification: Giving human qualities to animals, inanimate objects or abstract notions. Simile: A comparison using like or as. Suite: A musical composition consisting of a succession of short pieces. Tchaikovsky: Famous Russian composer of the Romantic era whose music is heard in The Nutcracker. Tempo: The pace at which music moves according to the speed of the underlying beat.

GUIDING QUESTIONS: How does the tempo or dynamics in a piece of music impact the way you feel? When you focus on listening to a brief section of music, what do you see, feel, or imagine? How is writing poetry similar to composing music?

LESSON PLAN

Mini-lesson: Identifying Tempo and Dymamics in Music

Watch the scene “The Russian Trepak” from The Nutcracker together. Ask students to focus on the music and its effect on the choreography as they watch. Review tempo and dynamics together before watching.

Tempo is the pace at which music moves according to the speed of the underlying beat. Listen to when the music speeds up and slows down. While watching have students consider this question, what happens to the dancers when the music speeds up or slows down?

Dynamics are the varying degrees of volume in the performance of music. While watching have students consider this question, when the music gets louder, do you hear your heartbeat go louder? How does that make you feel? How about when the music gets softer?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiiuN9eAy9Y

After watching, lead a class discussion on the clip. Identify if the tempo was slow or fast, and if the dynamics were loud or soft. Ask students to share what they observed and answer these questions: • How did the tempo or dynamics impact the way the dancers moved and the emotion expressed in the scene? • How did the tempo or dynamics affect your mood or energy as you watched?

Main Activity:

Part 1: Active Listening to Tchaikovsky

Explain that students will be practicing their active listening skills by listening to the famous composer, Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky is a Russian composer who wrote the music for The Nutcracker. His music can also be heard in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty! Review the definition of a composer together, a person who writes music by organizing sound.

Explain to students that while listening to different pieces from Tchaikovsky, they will be practicing their active listening skills. Active listening is what you do when you are focusing on what you hear, for example focusing on the words someone is saying when you are having a conversation. Active listening in music is similar to how you would describe a painting by using your eyes, except you are using your ear. This skill is very important for professional musicians, conductors, and composers to be able to better understand the music they are playing and work together to produce the sound.

Pass out Handout 4: Active Listening Handout and review the questions together. These are the questions that professional musicians ask themselves when listening to a piece of music.

NOTE: Make enough copies for each student to have four sheets.

Listen to the following four pieces of music from The Nutcracker and composer, Tchaikovsky. Encourage students to use the handout while listening to help them stay focused. After listening to each piece, ask students to pair share for one minute about the of music and how it made them feel, tempo, dynamics, etc.

NOTE: Songs are accessible via the Spotify link below, or by the YouTube links below each title.

https://open.spotify.com/album/3Cm31x7y11ygWiRHLvbjBS

1. “Overture” 3:05 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYeDxshrYN8

2. “In the Pine Forest” 3:58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjjrY5_lEYI

3. “Chocolate: Spanish Dance” 1:16 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KgVQIWkMFk

4. “Trepak: Russian Dance” 1:17 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2ISRMSIyX8

After listening, ask students to review their notes and circle ideas that are interesting to them. Come back together as a class and compare and contrast each piece of music.

Additional Resource for Active Listening

If you want to research more about active listening for music here is a great article that explains active listening vs. passive listening. If you want, this could also be an article that you read with your class before doing the main lesson or attending the performance.

https://www.hoffmanacademy.com/blog/active-listening/

Part 2: Write a Poem

Task: Students write a poem in response to how they felt when listening to one of Tchaikovsky’s pieces of music from The Nutcracker.

Explain to students that in the next activity they will be writing a poem about one of the pieces of music they just listened to. This poem will describe the tempo, dynamics, and emotion of the music through the use of figurative language and inspired by the five senses.

Passout Handout 5: Figurative Devices and review the devices together. You can choose to have students focus on just a few, or all of them depending on what you have already reviewed this year.

After reviewing, ask students to write a short poem. The poem can be about how one of the pieces of music made them feel, or their experience of active listening. An easy structure for the poem is using the five senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste. These can trigger memory, reveal emotion, and help students to describe how they felt or what they saw when they were active listening. Offer these questions to students for inspiration:

• What did you see when you listened to Tchaikovsky’s music? Did any images come up for you? • What instruments did you hear? Were they loud or soft? Was the music fast or slow? • While listening, did the music shine a memory of you touching something soft like a dogs tail? Or something smooth like a seashell? • Did the music bring up any memories of a recognizable scent? Could you smell a cookie fresh out of the oven? • Could you taste anything while listening? Did the music remind you of a pumpkin pie, or something you eat during the holidays?

Like Tchaikovsky who painted a picture with music, they will be poets painting a picture with words.

If time permits, option to read a few short poems together to inspire students and give them an example of the structure. Below is an example written by Perie Longo, a Poet Teacher.

If You Walked Into My Heart… by Perie Longo

You would hear me reading Sam and the Firefly to my two granddaughters, then singing Hush Little Baby to my new grandson.

You would see my son curled inside the tube of a wave. My daughter, dressed as a tree, singing out how deep her roots go.

I might be snorkeling with them and my husband in the smooth blue water of Hawai'i, gazing at schools of fish learning about the currents of life.

If you swam inside my heart, you’d see yourself writing about what fills your heart, your poems the hope of the world and we would be strangers no longer.

Assessment Criteria:

• Poems are inspired by Tchaikovsky’s music, or the experience of listening to his music. • Poems use the five senses to describe the music or a feeling. • Poems use a figurative device.

Give students 15 minutes to quietly write their poems. Remind students that there is no right way to write poetry, it is a way of artistic expression. Option to play music by Tchaikovsky in the background.

Ask students to reread what they wrote and make any edits. As an option, have students circle the figurative devices that they used. Have students share their poem with a partner during the reflection.

Purpose: Students develop their poetry writing skills, reflect on their active listening experience, and create a better understanding of how music and instruments evoke emotions.

Student Reflection

Have students share their poem with a partner. When reading, ask students to pause at commas and read with expression. Those listening should practice their active listening skills, and write down anything that they noticed in the poem. After the first student reads, have the listener share what they noticed in their peers’ poem.

After pair sharing, have students journal independently and reflect on the experience. What do you notice about the experience? What do you wonder? What have you learned about yourself?