Listening Maps

An example of Rob Dunn's listening maps - for more info, click here.

This week in 6th grade we did some listening maps that I got from Dr. Rob Dunn at UMEA a few years ago. The first was for Beethoven's Ode to Joy theme from Symphony No. 9 (from about 3:00-6:00). The map was simple enough and the students had to figure out how to follow the map on their own. Then we had a few people take turns leading the rest of the class through the map. One student that led them was a boy who ... has had some issues following directions. He got the pointer and started leading everyone in the map and his face just lit up. I have never seen him look so happy! He was just grinning as he was finally being successful in this class. Amazing!

The next map we did was the Theme and Variations of Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. This would have been much more challenging for them, but they already knew the piece pretty well so following the more difficult map was not as hard as it could have been. I saw some great faces as the kids tried to figure out how to follow this one and most of the class volunteered to lead the class through the map. Now that's some engaged 6th graders!

Last we made our own maps to Copland's Variations on a Shaker Hymn. We listened to it and made a map for each melody (the first part of the verse and the second). This was a bit trickier and I got quite the varied responses. Some made very patterned, simple maps and others were very complicated and seemed kind of "squiggly-ish", but I could tell that they had made them by listening to the music.

All in all, I thought it was a good lesson and I'm excited to continue with more listening maps. Next up might be Hedwig's Theme by John Williams. It's a great map that Rob Dunn gave us and the kids will absolutely love listening to Harry Potter.