Listening Maps in Action

Hey, everyone! Welcome back to the blog. Pursuant to the latest video I posted to the new YouTube channel, I just wanted to share with you a listening map the children in my class made for the Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky (1835-1881). Listening maps lend themselves so well to multi-age collaboration. Even children from different classes collaborated on this particular project.

The project began in the morning, when Zack reminded me that I had promised him the day before that we’d work on some music that morning. Unfortunately, I had to fill in for another teacher in the other classroom. So I asked Zack if he wanted to join me in that classroom once he’d finished some other work. So we made plans to present the lesson there.

By the time Zack joined me, Desiree, an older child, saw that we were about to do music and wanted to join us, so we invited her. Now I had an 8-year old and a 10-year old in the same lesson. Here we go!

We began with a story about Mussorgsky and the background behind the piece. (You can find my version of the story in Chapter 15 of the book.)

Next, we listened to the piece. Now, Pictures at an Exhibition is quite a long piece, clocking in at about 30 minutes. Don’t feel you have to sit with the children and listen to the entire piece. Feel free to listen to enough of the music to get the gist, or skip through some parts and play the highlights. The point of listening is to get to know the piece really well. You could even ask the children to go to the listening area themselves and listen and make sketches. It all depends on how much time you have and on the length of the children’s attention span. You can find the version we listened to here. I like this version because it shows the original paintings on which Mussorgsky based his composition. I had mixed feelings, though, about showing the children a YouTube video from my phone. Use your own discretion.

Once we’d listened to enough of the piece to get the children fired up, we made a list of the piece’s movements. Then, Zack and Desiree sketched out their game board and started drawing.

As a model for their illustrations, the children used a wonderful illustrated version of the story of the piece by Anna Harwell Celenza, which you can find here.

At this point, I left the children to work on their own. They dove in and worked with such fervor and concentration, it was spectacular to see. Of course, they had some trouble collaborating. Disputes arose over who got to draw what movement, and periodically they corrected each other’s drawings, which sparked some hurt feelings. But with a few Grace & Courtesy lessons they made it through.

Detail of spaces for the movements called Cows and Promenade III. You can see where Zack scribbled over Desiree’s cows because he thought her lines were too clean. This led to about 10 minutes of mediation. That’s the elementary for you.

Desiree adding some color to the work.

The Marketplace, where you can buy candy, popcorn, potatoes, and tomatoes (for 3 euros!).

All together, this work took the entire morning. The children simply disappeared into the work, as if they were in a trance. When they came to, they made this lovely game board. (I didn’t realize at the time, but when I took this photo the game board wasn’t quite finished.)

After they finished the game board, they really wanted to play with it, but the morning work cycle had ended. So, Zack invited Desiree to come up to our classroom and work with it in the afternoon.

So, in the afternoon, Zack and Desiree got together and invited two younger children, Marcus, 7, and Ezekiel, 5 1/2, to join them. After Zack and Desiree gave the others the gist of the story, they all sat down at the table to have a listen to the music and play with their listening map. The tokens they used came from all over the classroom. One child used a ball of clay, another used the black pyramid from the Montessori language material, and another used a green skittle from the Racks & Tubes.

Together, the children listened to the piece and moved their tokens around the game board as the music progressed.

I hope you can see the great potential of listening maps. Listening maps give children a deep understanding of a piece of music, get them thinking about history and art, and, most importantly, they provide children of all ages an opportunity to collaborate together to plan and implement a project.

That’s all for now. More later!