Section 1
The creation of the classes was one of the most fun parts of the project (apart from the actual sessions themselves). There was a lot of creativity involved and a lot of engaging with my inner-child.
The 'Are Conductors Wizards?' workshop was the one that I knew I wanted to do since the beginning of this process. I'd seen a workshop before that used a small amount of conducting at the end, but it engaged the children so much that I wanted to explore it as a whole workshop.
I approached everything from a stance of enjoyment and learning. I wanted the workshops to be as hands-on as possible, which is often the challenge for online learning.
To begin with, I needed to decide how I was going to approach conducting with children. After some thinking, I arrived at the conclusion that perhaps we should liken the baton to something more relatable: a wand. So, this is where I started, with 2 simple pictures of a well known and lovable character.
This was used as a simple warm-up, an ice breaker. Straight away, the children could begin to answer lots of questions without any prior knowledge of conducting. This worked incredibly well and set the scene for the rest of the workshop.
I then thought it would be good to add in some context. This part included the general questions; 'what is a conductor?' and 'what music groups might need a conductor?'. This quickly allowed us to assess where each child was at in their musical knowledge and whether they knew of different instruments or groups.
Section 2
The next slide we compared wands and batons, continuing the theme of wizardry. Fortunately, Megan had a couple examples of batons with her and I had a couple wands. This allowed us to point out differences both shown in the PowerPoint and also on our screens. For the purpose of this workshop, we asked all the children to have a pencil or stick (not too pointy) to use as their own baton. This created a physical element to the workshop.
To ease the group into the motions of conducting and to bridge the gap between wizards and conductors, I next included a video compilation. This has various clips of conductors having a bit of fun on the stage, conveying the message 'musicians must follow the conductor'! It was a lot of fun and there was a lot of giggling during this video.
Following this excitement, I decided it would be a good time for the children to begin some movements themselves. We began with general movements, with a funny video of bugs bunny to get some inspiration. I also included a picture slide of conductors in different poses where the children could guess what they were trying to get their musicians to do.
The workshop PowerPoint (with the help of Megan) then slowly introduced beats and how to conduct a simple 4/4. This was done through the use of the theme from the Wizard of Oz. I chose this piece because it is a well-known and child-friendly piece of music and it was themed around wizards! Having a theme running throughout helped the children follow what was happening more.
I did not want to include too much information, as this workshop was more about enjoying music, learning what a conductor is and what you might see them doing. It would be difficult to go into depth about pulse and musical terms in the time we had.
Section 3
I have created a compilation of the children engaging with the conducting exercises, showing the clear evolution and the fun energy that everyone had.
Section 4
Alongside each PowerPoint, I created a word document with pointers and activities that Megan may have wanted to explore. This allowed us to go into more or less depth and tailor the sessions to the ability of the children present.
This was a very fun session, allowing the children to take charge at the end with their conducting. It went down incredibly well!
If you would like to learn about the creation process for the other workshops, please see the other 2 instalments in 'A Deep Dive into the Creation of...' series. This includes more information about; 'Musical Sounds Scavenger Hunt' and 'Identifying Instruments' workshops.