51ºÚÁÏ

This is a 6-lesson Key Stage 3 unit focussing on developing students’ performance skills and knowledge of the instruments of the orchestra. It is comprised of four lessons of content followed by two lessons of assessment. This is a performance-focussed unit; I like to alternate between the practical focus of KS3 lessons between performance and composition each half-term. I use this as a Year 7 unit at my school, but it would work well and has sufficient support and challenge for any Key Stage 3 year group - I have removed all references to any year group to make it easy to adapt to the year group you intend to use it for.

As with all of my resources, all lessons include:
• a starter task
• three clear objectives increasing in challenge using verbs from Blooms’ taxonomy. Typically this involves some theory/contextual knowledge and a listening exercise followed by (most importantly!) practical application on instruments
• tasks that explicitly work towards each objective (each slide has a header with the lesson objective the task/activity works towards at the top)
• assessment for learning/quiz slides or tasks to check for understanding against each objective as it is completed throughout the lesson
• practical resources with detailed scaffolding supporting weaker students to make rapid progress
• a plenary slide at the end of the lesson

I work in an international context and my students use Google Classroom to access the powerpoints and work from the slides during practical tasks, but the key slides could easily be printed for students who don’t have access to tablet devices in school.

Students are only assessed on content taught in the first four lessons. Students are assessed on their knowledge (practical and theory) and listening skills in a short 20-mark written assessment in Lesson 5, and then given ample time in Lessons 1-5 to prepare for an individually assessed class performance of Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2. I have made the assessment criteria a generic Level 1-5 system to make it easy to adapt to the specific assessment system of your school.

As well as the powerpoint files, I have included the Knowledge and Listening Assessment pdf which needs to be printed for students to complete in Lesson 5, as well as an Answers pdf for teachers.