Section 1
This particular workshop was within my comfort zone the most, both with preparing and with carrying it out. I took inspiration from a friend I had seen taking some group classes, where he led a discovery of instruments and looked at how they produced sound. I thought this would be a great premise to try, especially online.
To begin, I had to decide on a theme to tie the whole workshop together. I wanted a piece of music that showcased a large range of instruments. After a bit of thought about pieces of music that may interest children (Disney, Harry Potter or other catchy songs), I settled on Peter and the Wolf. I chose this piece of music because it introduces instruments, characters and has an interesting story to accompany it. I thought this would be a great way to explore different instruments and what they sound like.
I started the workshop with some simple questions asking if any of the children played instruments and what their favourites were. This acted as a nice icebreaker to get everyone acquainted and participating. Each PowerPoint I made had a colour scheme, this one had a blue and green theme with trees, which I thought fit the narrative quite well. The themes I used in the other PowerPoints were a bit more general, but still colourful and fun.
I decided to have the same online video of Peter and the Wolf played at the beginning and end of the session. This video had close ups of each instruments as they played together and could prompt lots of useful discussions. Having the same recording repeated was a good way to assess how much the children had learnt by the end.
Section 2
The session then broke down each instrument, introducing the concept of instrument families, listening to a solo excerpt of each part and asking several questions about what they heard and saw.
Throughout this session, there were mini quizzes and lots of thought-provoking questions for the children to engage with and answer. This included thinking about how the instruments are played and how the sound is produced. It also created natural points for children (or teachers) to demonstrate any instruments they might have in their homes. These live demonstration helped to keep their attention and they seemed to really enjoy these parts.
Section 3
A particularly interesting clip I came across was the bassoon extract. The one I chose included a contemporary dancer, acting out the grandfather's role. I thought this was a very interesting addition and added another element to the workshop. It also helped open up the discussion about characters within the context of Peter and the Wolf.
After going through all the prominent instruments in each family, we listened to the original video again pausing at certain points to ask questions. I also included a summary slide about the background of Peter and the Wolf, this introduced the characters in the story.
Section 4
Towards the end of the session, I introduced a couple interactive games to keep energy levels up after so much information. One of the games was a matching game. This gave the children opportunity to reflect on the instruments they'd heard and match them to what characters they would best represent. They seemed to find the flute as the bird the simplest to get, and the horns as the wolf the hardest. This was a very visual activity which seemed to go down well.
Following this activity, the children then listened to another version of Peter and the Wolf; the opening with a compare introducing each character. I included this so they could see if they got the answers right and also hear it all in context.
As a final activity I included a 'Who's Who Instrument Guessing Game'. This was a game inspired by the popular children's game where a person asks questions to rule out answers until you find the item you're looking for. I thought creating a musical version of this would be interesting.
This activity allowed the children to put all their knowledge to use, taking turns to ask questions about the instruments and helping to rule out each instrument. We did not have very much time at the end unfortunately, otherwise we would have done several rounds of the game. Instead, we only had time for 1.
At the end of the workshops, we asked the children what they learnt and also if they had enjoyed themselves. As you can see from the picture below, we definitely got the thumbs up!
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