Students in my Symphonic Band, which is made up of sixty 7th and 8th graders, primarily work in a traditional symphony band setting. Their literature is generally formal in nature and students in this level class are independent sight readers of advanced traditional Western music notation. Since students are familiar with a more classical, structured and teacher-driven approach, this learning unit will follow an informal approach to learning while using vernacular music (Green 2008). The project will consist of the students being divided into groups of 5 to 6 students to create their own pop music ensemble. Since the majority of what this class is exposed to is traditional wind band literature from all over the globe and from a variety of centuries, students will have the opportunity to engage in an informal learning approach while using vernacular music from any decade within the 20th century through current, modern popular music. The aim here is to inspire new ways to approach problem-solving with their teams, or in this case, their student-created, student-driven small pop ensembles. The process should lead students on a journey of divergent and convergent thinking, as Anne Manning of Harvard University demonstrates in this brief video below:

This quarter long, 9-week, project will concentrate on giving students autonomy as they engage in peer mentorship through the following areas:

Create

In the creative stage, students will create music in their small groups that could be considered a “cover” of an existing piece of music or an original piece that represents the music and culture of the decade of their choice. Students will have the autonomy to either write their part using standard western music notation, learn their part by ear, through printed music, or via peer-to-peer teaching and learning. Students can select to perform their melodies and harmonies on their primary band instrument or branch out and use another instrument or their voice. In the process, they will be guided through the ethical ways of creating “covers” of songs if they choose to go that route and not create an original representative piece. Students will have the choice of working on their small ensemble pop music group by signing up for a during-class rehearsal in our adjacent rehearsal room we call 008, signing up for an after school 20-minute slot utilizing the band room, or rehearsals at a home of their choice with parental permission.

Perform

Anytime within the quarter, students may load their MP3 recording from any pop band member’s device. This class site will be on the already existing band website. Once I, the teacher, see the recording loaded, I will make it available to the entire class for all to listen to and/or view.

Respond

Once the teacher has posted the submitted recordings (which do not require video, only audio) students may respond to each other's musical performances on the band's website Symphonic Band page.

Connect

Under a “make the connections” page within the existing band website, students within their group can comment on the connections between their selected music and what was happening in the US and globally from the chosen decade the piece of music originated.

Nowhere in the process is the teacher making decisions on literature, how it will or should be performed, what roles are played within each ensemble, or any traditional teacher-centered music making decisions. Instead, the students have autonomy over each area. Lucy Green (2008) states that this form of untraditional music learning “is only one side of bringing informal learning practices into the school. The more radical and far-reaching side concerns pupil autonomy in relation to learning strategies. Rather than approaching popular music through recognized, formal teaching or pedagogic strategies, in seeking to reflect the informal learning practices of popular musicians the project gave pupils autonomy to direct their own learning.” (Green 2008, p. 14)

Aligning with Green’s informal music learning theories, my class community “members can also make updates, contributing content based on their own, invariably diverse interests and perspectives. In this way, students are enlisted as co-contributors to community knowledge and co-designers of learning.” (Cope and Kalantzis, 2023, p. 15). Learners in this create, perform, respond, and connect environment will use the highlighted [highlights added] Reflexive Learning traits within the following Cope and Kalantzis Reflexive Pedagogy chart:

Example on the Grid: 1960s Folk Rock used as Protest Music.

The example I give below uses a student pop ensemble that chooses 1960s as their decade and folk rock as their genre. Create, perform, respond and connect are each divided into what Adam Kruse (2014) labels as viewing music as a bridge, a lens, and a practice. The reflexive learning (Cope and Kalantzis, 2023) areas here would be the red and orange zones, where the students are forming a lens of how protest music of the 60s represented a cultural movement at the time, and a bridge into how that might relate to current events. The bridge in this example would be the students looking for examples in modern pop music that protest any current injustice(s) within modern society.

Culminating the Unit

Once the entire quarter is finished, students will take a poll online assigning numeric values to each pop ensemble for authenticity to decade and genre selected, performance quality, originality, and attention to musical details. The top three scoring pop ensembles will get to perform live for the class and then again for the Spring Concert. This culminating celebratory idea is something I am still debating. I look forward to any guidance with this idea and any others I have submitted above the culminating idea.

Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis, "Platformed Learning: Reshaping Education in the Era of Learning Management Systems,” in Varieties of Platformisation: Critical Perspectives on EdTech in Higher Education, edited by Duncan A. Thomas and Vito Laterza, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023a.

Green, Lucy, “Music Informal Learning in the Schools”, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2008

Kruse, Adam, “Toward Hip-Hop Pedagogies for Music Education,” Volume 34, Issue 2, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0255761414550535 , 2014