Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

As I stayed after school today to begin planning the concert music for the December Concert, I reflected back to the first concert that I prepared. This occurred back when I was an undergrad and I was performing my student teaching at a nearby high school. The band concert came off well and I learned a great deal from the cooperating teacher.

As I have been teaching every year for over a decade, I have learned a few things about concerts that you cannot be taught in undergrad or graduate school and you do not think about until they happen to you.

We all learn about how to prep our students for a concert. This list contains the other items besides preparation that have happened to me with PreK-3 general music/choral.

1. Risers - Part I: Some students are bound to fall off of the them. Try to put your wiggly students towards the front of the riser. I never tell the students that they are in height order. I tell them that they are in singing order.
2. Risers - Part II: On the day of the concert, find out from the nurse who has been in his/her office in the past two days. If there are students who have been in for vomiting, headaches, or nausea, and they appear at the concert, put them on the first two risers in case they faint. If they have a temperature, encourage the parents to take them home because performing under the hot stage lights is bound to make them more ill.
3. CD Accompaniments - Part I: They are wonderful because you can lead your students directly in front of them. However, there are times when the students get off with the canned accompaniments. One remedy to this is to make sure that you have a monitor connected so that the students can hear the accompaniments. Many times the speakers are in front of the students facing away from them and they cannot hear the accompaniments accurately. Therefore, by having a monitor that faces the students, they are more likely to stay with the accompaniment.
4. CD Accompaniments - Part II: If the students do get off with the accompaniments, I will put myself in front of some of my stronger singers and begin singing to them so that they get back on with the accompaniment. Once the stronger singers get back on, then the other students will follow lead.
5. iPod/MP3Players - If you compress your CD accompaniments to MP3 files so that you can play them from your iPod, then the MP3 file will sound different over a large sound system as opposed to what you hear through the ear buds. If you can keep from compressing your files to MP3, they will sound better when played over a large sound system.
6. If you are stuck behind the piano - With younger student, it is difficult to lead them in singing from behind the piano. Assign a couple of your strong singers to stand in front of the rest to lead them.
7. The Screamer - In elementary, we all have one. Although I can calm the screamer into a singer in my classroom, the lights, riser, and the presence of his/her parents leads the singer back into the screamer. I love enthusiastic students and I do not want to crush that energy as they are learning throughout the elementary years. Therefore, I will place my screamer away from a hanging or floor mic.
8. The Flasher - Young students can be very shy in front of an audience, and some can…well…be so shy that they use their dresses to cover their faces…and end up flashing the entire audience. This fact was an educational way to encourage the school to go to classroom “informances” for very young students. Informances are when the young students sing concerts in their classrooms and only the parents come to see them perform. Therefore, they are no longer in front of a large audience and they are in an environment that is considered safe to them. If you cannot convince a move towards informances, then try not to bring attention to your little flasher.
9. The Crier - This tends to also be a very young student. If this happens at a concert, I will bring the crier to his/her teacher as opposed to his/her parent. The teacher usually can calm the crier and encourage the child to rejoin the concert.
10. The Waver - There are numerous wavers on the riser and as much as I try to instill concert etiquette in them and their parents, there will always be the waver. Some children need the reassurance of seeing and acknowledging their parents before they perform. And, I can understand that with the younger students. Therefore, I have the students on their riser spots 10 minutes before the concert begins. The parents will then take multiple pictures, wave numerous times, and yell “HI” at their children before the concert even begins.
11. The Wanderer - The wanderer is the student who wanders somewhere else once the concert ends because the parents– who are picking the students up right after the performance ends–could not get to their child. The wanderer again tends to be a younger student. Therefore, when our concerts end, the elementary students go back to their classrooms with their classroom teachers and the parents pick them up from there so that there is no confusion and the classroom teacher can keep track of all of them.

This is my list that I have compiled over the years. What items are on your list for elementary music concerts? Please leave a comment and share!