Elementary Orchestra Repertoire Options by Unit/Concert

 

I have been wanting another way to look at the repertoire I have taught in past years, organized by unit or by concert.  I had always been keeping track of past repertoire, but it was just a long list in a Google Doc format, and I would have to scan through the whole thing (or do Ctr + F to find a specific piece) each time I was looking for something.  This new document groups pieces by unit--during which part of the year this piece could be taught or for which concert it could be performed.

There are so many pieces out there for beginning orchestra, but for it to work in my teaching situation, it would have to fit in a specific slot depending on what has been taught by that time in the year and it would have to help provide a balance between different time periods, styles, parts of the world, composers, etc. that students are studying throughout the course of the year.  Please see this blog post for a sample winter concert and spring concert program for first- and second-year orchestra students along with a list and explanation of the different "slots" I try to fill with my repertoire selections.  

In my district, we have a winter band/orchestra/choir concert in December, our district-wide String Fest field trip and concert at the end of January, and a spring band/orchestra/choir concert in May.  In February, once String Fest is over and we are into our Solo/Ensemble unit, beginners will start their first very simple full orchestra piece (often just two parts), while second-year students will learn a full orchestra piece that may or may not be performed on the spring concert--students will get to vote from a few options they've been studying later in the year.

Anyway, I went ahead and created a Google Sheet, organized more-or-less chronologically through the school year, with both first-year (5th grade) and second-year (6th grade) orchestra represented.  Titles in each category are listed in alphabetical order, with links to the publisher's website (or to a different blog post for my arrangements).  The last column allows me to track when I've last taught each piece too.  

• Elementary Orchestra Repertoire Options by Unit/Concert

As always, feel free to make a copy and update as you like!  Which other pieces would you recommend I check out?

Melodies by Ear

On the last week of small groups, I like to have students figure out how to play some melodies by ear.  This isn't their first exposure to learning something by ear--we do echoing throughout the year, and students would have learned the two-measure melody from "Medieval Kings" by Soon Hee Newbold a few weeks earlier--but I want to give students another idea of what is possible with their instruments before we part for the summer.

First, I'll remind students that while we've spent a lot of time this year learning to read music and learning new music by reading it on the page, that that's not the only way musicians can learn new music.  I'll say, "If I told you the first notes of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" are open D, D, open A, A, could you figure out the next part?  I'll let students work on it on their own or help guide a student who might be struggling and then have someone share before we all try it.  (Or, if we have played Twinkle earlier in the year, we might try "Hot Cross Buns" instead)  It can be helpful to have the D Major scale with solfege up so I can point to notes as a visual cue if needed too.  Once most of the students have at least the first phrase of Twinkle in their fingers, I invite them to try out any of the options on their Melodies by Ear sheet.  "Baby Shark" is a popular one!  While I don't talk about the transposition bit at the bottom, it is there in case anyone needs an additional challenge :)

Melodies by Ear (half-sheet, includes 10 titles--print double-sided and cut in half)

• Word document 
• PDF

Melodies by Ear (full sheet, includes all 12 titles--I double-side this with Lines and Spaces for each Clef)

• Word document 
• PDF

Contents:

1. The Itsy Bitsy Spider
2. The Farmer in the Dell
3. It's Raining, It's Pouring
4. It's a Small World
5. Baby Shark
6. Theme from Star Wars
7. Joy to the World
8. London Bridge
9. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
10. Three Blind Mice
11. When the Saints Go Marching In
12. Theme from Jurassic Park

Some songs are more popular/better known than others, but I think most, if not all, of my students have recognized at least one of these.  Which melodies would you add to this sheet?

Lesson Plan Overviews and Agenda by Week

 

I wanted to share sample lesson plans + agendas + resources for the entire school year.  To view, here's the link:

• Lesson plan overviews and agenda by week (Google Sheet)

You'll see the year organized by week, with 5th grade (first-year orchestra) on the left and 6th grade (second-year orchestra) on the right.  The blue week number in the first column is a link to that week's lesson plan, and the image of the agenda/white board in the second column is a link to the Google Drawing.  Feel free to make a copy of either and then edit them for yourself.  The fourth column lists links to corresponding blog posts.

Then, the link below is more specific lesson plans for each week, including full orchestra rehearsals too--not just small groups.  Because the repertoire changes each year, I called pieces things like [String Fest Piece #1], [String Fest Piece #2], or [Spring #1] with pretty broad lesson plans for those. (Please see this post for different repertoire options)

• Lesson plans by the week (first-year orchestra) (Google Doc)
• Lesson plans by the week (second-year orchestra) (Google Doc)

In my district, orchestra begins in 5th grade with 30 minutes of small-group learning once a week and 30 minutes of full orchestra once a week.  (6th grade is still elementary school in my district.)  The school year begins just after Labor Day and ends the first or second week in June.  The first week of school for me is spent recruiting and finalizing rosters and creating the first small group rotation schedule (most students will have signed up the previous spring), so small groups begin the second week of school, hence 35 weeks of lesson plans.  Full orchestra rehearsals begin the third week of small groups (so the fourth week of school, about the last week of September).  For performances, we have a winter concert in early December, a district-wide String Fest field trip and concert the end of January (right as the second semester is starting), an elementary orchestra Solo/Ensemble festival in March, and then a spring concert in early-to-mid May.  Orchestra Expressions is the method book we've used for several years, and then I have different supplements and composition worksheets and other resources that I've created as well.  I hope seeing the school year mapped out in this format with one orchestra teacher's plans helps with both long-term planning and individual lesson plans!

Twinkle Arrangement

Here is a very simple two-part arrangement of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" that I used with my beginning orchestra last year.  Each instrument has a turn playing melody and harmony for a verse.  I've written the Part I and Part II for all four instruments, so you can mix and match instrumentation as you like.  I had cellos and basses play Part I (where they get melody on Verse 1) and violins and violas on Part II (where they get melody on Verse 2).  I double-sided the parts so everyone got a Part I and Part II for their instrument, but I starred the side they'd be learning.  The form is Introduction, Verse 1, Interlude, Verse 2, and Coda.  I used just a bit of Alpha notation where I thought it might be helpful.

I wasn't sure what my students would think of learning and performing this piece, if they thought they were too old to be playing "Twinkle," but they ended up really enjoying it.  I think that they liked that it was a familiar melody to them that they also knew the audience would recognize and that they liked how it sounded with both melody and harmony together.  The harmony part is very simple--pretty much either a third away from the melody using D string notes or just open strings so students were quite successful at being able to learn this quickly and confidently.  There were also opportunities to have to count measures of rests.

Because everyone gets to play both the melody and harmony (and the harmony is basically the same for all instruments), it was easy to rehearse in full orchestra.  I could have everyone practice the melody together (starting on whichever verse) or everyone practice the harmony together (starting on the other verse) or as written (everyone starting on the same measure number).

I did play along on the piano to fill out the harmony a bit and to provide more rhythmic support.  The piano arrangement below is pretty close to what I played--feel free to improvise something else too!

I'm planning to put this into my rotation of a first "full orchestra" piece--along with my arrangement of "Ode to Joy" and Michael Allen's arrangement of "New World Symphony Theme."

• Twinkle parts
• Twinkle parts with links to audio files (WAV files) to preview or for students to play along with to practice
• Score 
• Piano part (with basic score)

Enjoy!

C/E String Notes

 

Orchestra Expressions gets to the C and E string notes pretty late in Book 1, and I like to introduce them to first-year players in the spring, as we are preparing for our spring concert.  I created a double-sided sheet where students learn about half steps and whole steps to figure out the names of the notes on their newest string on the front and then the back side is music that uses these new notes.

I'll have a student read a paragraph out loud, and then we'll go back dissect it together, pointing to the notes on the keyboard poster to figure out the notes on the E or C string one by one and get them written down.  It is fun to see students make predictions about what the letter names or sharps will be, and then I encourage them to see if their guesses are correct as we work through the sheet together.  Many will independently fill in the corresponding bubbles on their fingering chart that's taped in their folder as we go through this sheet too.  Otherwise we do that together the following week as a quick review.

Ideally each student in the small group is on the same instrument, but this tends to be the time of year when I have to do combined small groups or creative scheduling due to testing or field trips so I'll have multiple instruments in a group.  When this happens, I have to be careful to keep the pace moving so we can get through all the notes/fingerings but not to go so fast that I am losing/confusing students--this can be a tricky lesson for some!  It can also be tricky to play these pieces together since they are in different keys depending on the instrument/string--I'll use my judgement in the moment if it makes more sense to have the E string instruments play while C string instruments air-bow or say finger numbers or clap/count or just listen and then switch or to just have everyone play the parallel 5ths together.  In full orchestra, we'll do "show and tell" with one of the pieces to avoid the parallel 5ths :)

In the both the Word document and PDF below, I've included three different versions of the sheet music--one with regular notation, one with a few Alpha notes at the beginning of each piece, and one with all Alpha notes.

C/E string notes worksheet/repertoire

• Word document
• PDF
• Audio files

Contents:

1. C/E Pentascale and Arpeggio
2. Mattachins (Sword Dance)
3. Barcarolle
4. Funga Alafia

Image of labeled keyboard (png)

Feel free to use and update as you like!

Weekly Newsletters

 

Students at my schools have one 30-minute small group and one 30-minute full orchestra rehearsal each week, and I like to send a weekly newsletter to families to keep everyone up-to-date.  I include a summary of what we did that week, the practice assignment, the link to the small group schedule, and any concert info/reminders of important dates.

I used to just write an email each week (with lots of copy/pasting from the previous year's weekly email), but it was only text.  At some point I switched to Google Slides, and I like this format much better.  Each week fits on one slide, and I can include buttons with links to the schedule, concerts in the area, music advocacy resources, and more.  It's easy to add pictures and text boxes and to move things around to make it look just the way I want. (For any students who are flagged "No media release" on Infinite Campus, I do check in with those families to see if it's okay that I include pictures of their student in the newsletter and that has not been a problem.)  Families really like seeing pictures of their students in the newsletter, and I'm hoping that including more pictures makes it more likely for families to read the other information that I include as well :)  The document is set to "Anyone with the link can view," and then I include the link in the weekly email to families.

Instead of starting from scratch each week, I have a tab open with the previous year's newsletter and simply copy/paste the corresponding slide into the top of this year's document and update as needed.  Now the weekly newsletters are all contained in one document, and it's easy to scroll down to previous weeks.  I change the background color each week, so you see a nice rainbow effect as you scroll through the school year.  Any extra slides with concert info or Solo/Ensemble info etc. have a white background so they stand out.

My weekly email is basically:

Happy Tuesday orchestra families!

Please check out our weekly orchestra newsletter to find out what we did in orchestra this week!

(I highlight "weekly orchestra newsletter," hit "Control K," and then copy/paste the newsletter link to turn the text into a link.)

I'll also include concert into or other important info in the body of the email for those who don't click on the link.  I cc my administrators and bcc parent/guardian emails and then "schedule send" the email for the end of the school day.

Here are templates of an entire school year's worth of slides.  Feel free to make a copy and modify as you like!

Weekly newsletter template

• 5th grade orchestra (first-year players) (Google Slides)
• 6th grade orchestra (second-year players) (Google Slides)

Notes: Along the top where it says the week number, I also include the school and grade level, since I teach at multiple schools and want to keep it organized for myself.  I've also removed all the links but kept the text blue to see where I would generally include one.

Grade/Attendance Sheet

 

While my school does all their attendance records online (on Infinite Campus), I still print out my own attendance sheets, which also double as a place to record grades.  They are, of course, color-coded by instrument, and then student names are in order based on their small group.  That way, whenever we are doing a quick playing check-up in class, I don't have to hunt for each student's name on my sheet--everyone in that particular small group are located next to each other on the grade sheet.  I can also see at a glance how many students in each small group might have forgotten to bring their instrument to school that day.  I also include a column with the initial of each student's teacher with an asterisk if they are in advanced math, since that impacts my schedule and is helpful information to have handy.

Each orchestra's grade sheet is printed on whichever color paper is that orchestra's color.  My binder has a colored divider for each of the four orchestras I teach, and then behind each divider is the small group schedule, grade/attendance sheet, and full orchestra seating chart, all printed on paper that matches that orchestra's color.  (I don't use the color printer, but the different colored background prints in various shades of gray that makes the different instruments look slightly different).

When I create a new small group schedule and small groups get changed, I reorder the names on my attendance sheet document and print out a new one.  I can edit the weight of the border to make thicker lines between each small group.  Each orchestra is a different sheet within the same Google Sheet, so I can easily move between tabs at the bottom.

Along the top of the paper copy, I can write in the date or the name of an assignment and what it is I'm grading.

With attendance, I use different markings to code different things I want to keep track of.  The slash in the upper left for Johannes Brahms in the screenshot above above means there is no instrument in that student's spot on the instrument rack so I need to check attendance on Infinite Campus to see if Johannes is absent that day or if he forgot to bring his instrument that day and will need to borrow a spare.  The slash in the lower left means a student forgot to bring their orchestra folder/book.  Poor Clara Schumann is missing both her instrument and music the second week of this attendance sheet.  If I arrive to school in the morning and see that someone's instrument has been left at school all week, I write a little dot in the box (see J.S. Bach above) and then check attendance to see if they're in school that day.  If someone is absent, I draw a circle and am sure to write that student a quick email to let them know what they missed at orchestra that week.  For students who are present and have brought their instrument/music, I don't write anything.  At the end of the semester when I am entering disposition grades for Responsibility, I can look back and count exactly how many times a student hasn't brought their instrument or music to school so I am not just relying on my memory.

For grading, my district uses numbers (4=exceeds expectations, 3=meets expectations, 2=basic), and I will record grades onto this sheet and then enter them into Infinite Campus.  With playing checkup rubrics/comment sheets, I take a picture of those before handing them back to students and then transfer the numbers onto the attendance/grade sheet so it's easier to enter into IC later.  In this case, I write the headings small enough so I can fit three grades in each box to save space.

• Grade/Attendance Sheet Template (Google Form)

Feel free to make a copy and edit in a way that works for you!