Spring Marathon

by VERA MAZZOTTA
    School sections
    • Lower secondary school
    Educational subjects
    • Instrumental practice
    • Aural skills (Ear training)
    • Music and technologies

Spring Marathon

The Spring Marathon is an activity for the piano course. The idea came out of some Masterclasses which featured a genuine marathon, not a school concert but a set objective: the students played, listened to the others, and swapped ideas. An imminent performance results in changes: the studying becomes more rational, the brain sees the piece of music as a problem-solving exercise; in the various study sessions improvements are seen: the students learn to structure their studies with the performance in mind and, by transferring their skills, to deal with new pieces more quickly. However, it is the event itself which brings maturity. The Marathon is the arrival point of a collaborative body of work: during group lessons the date and theme are decided, work is done on the performance and improving the pieces of music, on the creation of individual products and those of others; all the students then use an emoticon system to evaluate their classmates’ product to help them improve. The Marathon is a real catalyst for motivation. 

Work tools

Essential elements include actions planned by the teacher and the direct involvement of the students in each phase. The event needs to be included in the educational planning and scheduled for the end of March. Collective lessons, an indispensable occasion for exchange, must be included in the timetable. The teacher looks for and arranges more pieces than the number of students and plays them in order to motivate them. When working with images/videos, it is necessary to have a database for the students in difficulty and a good video-editing programme, while remaining open to the use of mobile applications by the students. It is possible to use only one PC or to install open resources on those of the students or the IT Lab. The students develop rules to award marks, create voting paddles, draw up the ranking, decide on the role of the audience, and organize the event. Recommended spaces are the school’s theatre/assembly hall with a video projector/IWB. 

Educational purposes

The skills, goals and training objectives selected by the teacher for this experience are shown below.

Competences
    Listening
    • Interpretation
    • Analysis
    • Comprehension
    Production
    • Execution
    • Composition
    Reading and Writing
    • Use of conventional analogic music notation
GOALS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPETENCES [...]
    Lower secondary school
    Listening
    • Understands and evaluates events, materials, and musical works recognising their meanings, also in relation to his/her own musical experience and the different historical/sociological context.
    Production
    • Actively participating in music experiences through the execution and the interpretation of vocal and instrumental music pieces belonging to different genres and cultures.
    • Capacity to conceive and create music and multimedia messages, also though improvisation or collective elaboration processes, using also IT tools, in critical confrontation with models belonging to the musical heritage
    Reading and Writing
    • Using different notation systems functional to reading, analysis and reproduction of pieces of music
    • Integrating one’s own music experience with other knowledge and practices using appropriate codes and codification systems
Educational targets

The students: 
-Decipher the musical code, understand and use correct terminology. 
-Distinguish meter, agogic accents, dynamics, recognize form by inference from the historical context/genre. 
-Play music with an interpretation which includes recognition and understanding of the rhythmic-metric, melodic, harmonic, agogic-dynamic structures. 
-Vary their performance in terms of interpretation, justifying the choices made. 
-Reflect on the binomials music/image, music/language; are able to draw working parameters from these. 
-Reflect on the expressive congruency/non-congruency between still/moving images and the kinetic qualities expressed by a piece of music, and reuse these. 
-Understand the function of music to convey emotions and messages. 
-Design a montage of images and music, learning the basics of video-editing. 
-Develop a functional and replicable study method. 
-Work in a group and are able to handle mentoring tasks. 
-Are able to carry through a performance both emotionally and technically. 
-Understand the complexity of an evaluation session, can justify their evaluation, and also know how to evaluate themselves. 

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Slide "Spring Marathon"
Presentazione della buona pratica Download
Link utili
Mattia Antonazzo. Classe III. Emozioni. Video e Brano di sua composizione. Maratona 2016. Click here
Federico Ciccioli. Classe II, ora alunno di Conservatorio. Maratona Registi al Contrario. Click here
Oana Tuttunaru. Classe III. Video della Maratona Registi al Contrario. Registrazione del brano studiato per la Maratona 2019 e intervista Click here
Adriana Trezzini. Classe II. Video della Maratona 2017 interamente montato dalla ragazza con il cellulare. Esecuzione al Concorso FIUMICINO Classica. Click here
Gguida veloce per montare video e foto con musica Click here
Materiali finalizzati all'azione didattica
Scheda di analisi del brano vuota Download
Scheda di analisi del brano compilata Download
Analisi del testo di canzoni Download
Progettazione dell'attività "Maratona di Primavera" Download
Scheda di riflessione su un brano Download
Approfondimenti
Bibliografia Download