String Fest Timeline for Planning

 

String Fest is a huge undertaking.  It involves ALL the district's orchestra students and teachers, from elementary through high school.  Each grade level prepares a piece of their own to perform at the String Fest evening concert, and then everyone prepares the same multi-level grand finale piece.  There is a field trip to the high school's field house during the day where each group gets their own rehearsal time and then the combined groups get a combined rehearsal in the afternoon followed by the evening concert for families.  It is a great opportunity to build community and for elementary orchestra students to see and hear the older students and to envision themselves as one day performing as part of the high school orchestras.  String Fest used to be in May, but when signing up for middle school electives got moved up to mid-January, we began scheduling String Fest at the end of January to help serve as a retention tool.

Planning for this one-day event begins the previous spring with scheduling the date and continues throughout the fall and early winter with a lot of collaboration between all the orchestra teachers.  The district that I attended as a student did not have an event like this, so I had a lot to learn when I began teaching in a district that has a tradition of an annual String Fest.  To keep track of everything that needed to be done, I created a timeline for planning.  There is so much that needs to happen behind the scenes in order for the day to run smoothly and can be overwhelming.

Please check with your admin/school/district for procedures and policies (like scheduling dates, reserving rooms, permission slip forms, how to handle student meds on a field trip, etc.), but here is the guide I created to help myself not to forget any of the details from year to year along.  It also includes links to some supporting documents and blog posts:

• String Fest timeline for planning (Google Doc)

I'm sure I'll be adding more at some point, but here's a start towards planning a district-wide String Fest.  What else would you like to know?  Or, what additional resources would be helpful to see?  Happy planning!