Seasons Thematic Unit
Stephen Mazepa
April, 2002

Cover Art1       Seasons.Thematic.Cover-Art2

Contents

                                        Introduction
                                        The Found Sound Orchestra
                                        Integrated Subjects

                                                                                Unit Overview

                                                                                Sample Lesson Plans
                                                                                                   Visual Arts: What I Think You Think the Artist Meant
                                                                                                    Music Composition: (Part 1) Favorite Pop Song Outline
                                                                                                    Music Composition: (Part 2) Pop Song Guessing Game
                                                                                                    Geography Triangles

                                                                                 Resources
                                                                                                   Web Sites
                                                                                                    Hard Copy Samples of Downloadable Visual Art
                                                                                                    Visual Arts Data Organizer
                                                                                                     Song Outline Elements






Introduction
    This unit takes place approximately four times during the school year and acts as a refreshing change of pace. These additional activities will integrate and round out the district-mandated curriculum without requiring teaching content too far eschew from it. With this unit easily integrating nearly all content within the standard curriculum, it is useful as an exercise for reviewing, applying, and assessing students’ newly acquired knowledge.

    The culminating project for this unit is the "Found Sound Orchestra" performance. It resembles a choral or symphonic production in form. The participants, however, need not endure the rigors of classical music training. I adapted this production idea from a similar event that I participated in during a 1984 workshop with Vermont's internationally recognized Bread and Puppet Theatre that culminated in a winter festival attended by approxinately 1500 residents of central Vermont.

The Found Sound Orchestra of Seasons
    A found sound orchestra production is a live presentation that comes off as a cross between an ode to, and a parody of a familiar aspect of life. Its primary strength as a teaching tool is in its ability to connect students in a multi-sensory and emotional level with the regular curriculum as it relates to the theme which, in our case, is the seasons.

    Because the first season to prepare for is autumn, it is dealt with somewhat differently than the others. This is because the teacher is introducing the elements that will comprise the unit's culminating project at the same time individual subjects’ content is being taught. As each subsequent season approaches, students can be cued to start thinking about how their current studies might be expressed through the next seasonal Found Sound Orchestra performance. Furthermore, since all of the component parts of the composition grow from the students’ own schoolwork a successful autumn performance sets the example for future recognition. Motivation comes more easily when students clearly understand how they will benefit from working hard.

    What does such a production look like? Picture a group of students, perhaps accompanied by parents or friends, positioned like a choir on risers and facing a conductor. In addition, there are various noise-making implements, both natural and fabricated, that have been chosen for their association to the theme (seasons) which are used more or less as they would be but toward aesthetic instead of utilitarian ends. The atonal nature of the performance allows the teacher to focus on teaching compositional elements such as motifs and variations, movements, themes and dynamics.

Integrated Subjects
    Language Arts curriculum contributes initially, through assignments on descriptive writing as well as biographical, fiction, and poetry reading.

    Social Studies curriculum contributes through assignments using an atlas to compare a season as we know it to peoples’ experiences in other US regions, parts of the world, or perhaps, times past.
Science curriculum on the weather, planetary position and the Earth’s tilt, or animal habitat and behavior to name just a few topics dovetail easily with a seasonal theme.

    Math curriculum contributes directly through an exercise in scaling and standardizing poster sizes to accommodate a single wall where they all must fit and be distanced from each other proportionate to the real world geographies they represent.

    Teaching Music Composition and Visual Arts Appreciation/Analysis alongside the above subjects acts to legitimize and properly value the arts as integral in our lives and in education. Guided through rubrics of analysis for each art form, students learn to deconstruct and appreciate pieces in their own right as they evaluate their messages for inclusion in the performances.



Unit Overview (Autumn)
Preliminary
    Class Reading
Three books for three groups can start reading even before the teacher introduces this unit. Each third of the class reads a different book from the Autumn Moon Series by Jean Craighead George, Harper/Trophy: The Moon of the Deer (September), The Moon of the Alligators (October), and The Moon of the Gray Wolves (November). Students keep journals, recording pages read each day, timeline of story events and later on, evaluating timeline for story grammar and autumn theme.

Day 1 (Monday)
    Library and Web Research (See Sample Lesson Plan #1)
Students individually find one piece of visual art, from either their school library or the World Wide Web that reflects an aspect of the season at hand. Next, they must do a web search for that artist with the goal of ranking some sites for their value biographically and in a historic context.
    Adjective and Adverb Brainstorm
Students write down adjectives and adverbs that come to mind when they look at their chosen seasonal art piece. They are instructed to brainstorm both, words describing the piece’s overall quality such as serene or busy, loud or calm, as well as words describing the portrayal of specific characters or events such as, cold, sweaty, damp, excited…

Day 2 (Tuesday)
    Favorite Song Deconstruction (See Sample Lesson Plan #2)
Students bring in an audio tape, CD, or MP  file containing a favorite classroom-appropriate song of which they know most of the words. The teacher reviews how to break down a song into verse, refrain, perhaps bridge, and asks students to write an outline of their song in such a manner. Next they are asked to consider the musical parts of each line in the verse, refrain… etc., in order to put it into "A – B – A – C – A…" form.
    Seasonal Art Gallery (See Sample Lesson Plan #1)
The teacher assists all students in obtaining a hard copy of their chosen art pieces for displaying them around the room. After each student has transferred the words from his or her brainstormed list onto mini post-it notes, they peruse the many offerings in the classroom gallery, posting their words by others’ visual art choices. The most frequently used words and sentiments, least frequently used words and sentiments, as well as novel expressions are tallied and discussed for their implications about the season, about visual arts and about ourselves.

Day 3 (Wednesday)
    Favorite Song Guessing Game (See Sample Lesson Plan #3)
Having finished the musical outline of their favorite song, students share their songs and outlines in small groups through a guessing game format. Group members strive for consensus, discussing the accuracy of outlines to corresponding songs. First teacher demonstrates by sharing a favorite pop song, distributing slightly flawed outlines to all but one group. KEEP SONG OUTLINES!
    Found Sound Scavenger Hunt Begins!
The teacher directs students to find ("think up") sounds that are the audible equivalents of seasonal sentiments already derived from the literary and visual arts. The teacher demonstrates by passing out branches full of dried leaves for students to shake, impersonating a baseball announcer doing play-by-play coverage of a play-off game, then recites some text from one of the three books being read.



Day 4 (Thursday)
    Geography Triangles: Research
Class brainstorms a list of natural and human related phenomena that help define this time of year in this location. Next, we classify these elements into general categories, (e.g., events, geographical characteristics, etc.) that help us compare other places to our own. Working in pairs, students use world atlases to locate a significant geographic location for each artist. Reasonable locations include an artist’s place of birth or death, where he or she did significant work, or where the specific seasonal piece chosen on Day 1 was created. Then they investigate these two points of interest, comparing climate and other seasonally related information garnered from the opening brainstorming session. Finally, they compare their findings to the descriptor frequency chart noting similarities and differences to our own experience in this time of year.
    First Found Sound Auditions
Students bring in ideas and implements for demonstrating various found sounds of the season. Teacher instructs audience evaluators not to rate the various found sounds offered up as "better" or "worse." Rather, students are to categorize the sounds in terms of their newly compiled descriptor (adjective/adverb) frequency chart, deciding whether each offering fits as a recurring refrain (high frequency,) a verse (medium frequency,) or a one-time bridge (low frequency.) Students should be encouraged to propose sounds representative of this time of year according to their geography research also, even if it conflicts with our local experience.

Day 5 (Friday)
    Found Sound Auditions
Auditions continue. Students who have already auditioned once and have more ideas to offer need to recruit presenters from the list of those not having presented a found sound yet. Those presenting others’ ideas have creative license over how they present the new found sound. There is one new criterion for the audience evaluators. In addition to categorizing the proposed sounds according to the descriptor frequency chart, they must also decide how novel the new sound is. Is it a unique audible representation of something on the chart or is it a variation of a previously proposed sound? Make sure not to overvalue uniqueness. Remind students that music is built upon variations so listeners can readily familiarize themselves with a piece of music.
    Geography Triangles: Mock-up Posters
Once students finish data collection and comparisons, they organize the information into triangular posters with small poster mock-ups first. The length of each triangle’s sides must be proportionate to actual distances between the school and each artist’s significant geographic location as well as the distance to each other’s.

Day 6 (Monday)
    Introduction to Found Sound Composition
Music guessing game groups from Day 3 reconvene to dabble in found sound composing. Students use pop music outlines from Days 2 and 3 as the structure for assigning any found sounds proposed to date. They may use more than one sound simultaneously as long as that composite appears consistently throughout the composition. Of course, teacher demonstrates with his or her own favorite pop song outline, substituting some of the proposed found sounds into the structure where words and melody used to be. Each group member gets a chance to direct the remaining members in a mini found sound transcription of his or her pop song outline.
    Vivaldi’s Seasons (Autumn) Listening Exercise
The teacher plays Vivaldi’s Autumn, instructing students to take notes on recurring themes and compositional structure. Teacher also asks students to imagine which found sounds might fit.



Day 6 (continued)
    Found Sound Auditions
Auditions continue as in Day 5. Those who feel yesterday’s recruit missed the mark when presenting their found sound may continue to recruit others among those not having presented. All students must present at least one found sound. If a student has only presented a classmate’s but not yet his or her own, he or she must do so without recruiting someone else. Final auditions announced for tomorrow.
    Geography Triangles: Posters
When the mock-ups are completed, the class must establish a standardized scale for which all finalized posters must adhere. What determines this standard scale is the wall upon which all the posters will hang, preferably in the hallway leading to the eventual location of the found sound performance. All triangular posters will emanate out from a central point representing the local geographic location with respect to all the other points of interest. The posters must all be able to fit on this wall, covering the most space without encroaching upon the ceiling or floor.

Day 7 (Tuesday)
    Geography Triangles: Posters
Work continues in pairs on mock-ups, (which students should have all but completed,) scale standardization, and finalized posters.
    Found Sound Auditions
Auditions continue as in Day 6.
    Found Sound Compositions
Small groups complete their mini found sound interpretations of pop song outlines and share them with the class. Before each piece is demonstrated, that piece’s student composer/director should write the outline form (A – B – A – C – A…) on the board and cue the audience evaluators at each change. Teacher instructs audience evaluators not to rate the mini compositions as "better" or "worse." Rather, students are to take note of similarities between compositions, looking for main themes and variations, both sonically and compositionally. Teacher announces that everyone must take notes and turn them in at the end of the period.

Day 8 (Wednesday)
    Geography Triangles: Posters
Work continues on scale standardization, (which students should have all but completed,) and finalized posters. "Where on the wall must our own position on the globe be?"
    Emergent Found Sound Composition with Orchestra
The rest of the groups present found sound transcriptions of pop song outlines. Next, teacher exerts some editorial control by arranging and sequencing students’ notes together into a larger composition. All students participate in the emerging found sound orchestra with their teacher conducting. Teacher reminds students that the more serious they take the performing aspect of this, the more hilarious the final presentation will be. Teacher asks students to write down any specific recitations, particular "instruments," or choreography that they would particularly like to perform. Otherwise, teacher also announces, parts WILL be assigned for all students.

Day 9 (Thursday)
    Geography Triangles: Finished Posters Mounted on Our World Wall
Before students mount posters on the wall, they must first position latitude and longitude lines. Given the range of locations represented in the posters, the teacher and students must make some important decisions prior to Day 9 concerning just how far North and South these lines must go.



Day 9 (continued)
    Found Sound Orchestral Composition – Beta 1
Teacher distributes a refined draft of the composition to students and all attempt a trial run through of each movement. Teacher actively solicits feedback and makes adjustments accordingly.

Day 10 (Friday)
    Finished Posters Mounted on Our World Wall
Elements of posters to include: temperatures - average, record high, and record low for this time of year; distances from your current location; how each place is significant to the artist of note; any other important data relevant to the visual art affiliated with this location; and finally, the hard copy of each artist’s autumn theme piece.
    Found Sound Orchestra Dress Rehearsal
Remind students that the degree of pretension infused into each individual’s performance is directly proportional to the irony and parody conveyed to the audience. What this means is sporting nicer clothes and a very pompous attitude, as if you were about to debut a musical masterpiece – which you are.

On or Shortly After Day 10
    Found Sound Orchestra of the Season Debut
If the teacher expects that aesthetic chinks in the composition or the performance might still need work, he or she might want to schedule the performance for an assembly in the following week or weekday evening. This way, perhaps the teacher can schedule a casual "sneak preview" performance over the weekend. Don’t overlook parent volunteers as potential "guest performers." A few hams can go a long way toward modeling the hilarious irony in a performer’s pompous affect while performing an atonal, found sound piece.