Just Brainstorming Over Here

 My first idea was inspired by two things

1. When serving as the assistant director of the Junior Providence Singers I led the group of high-school choral students in collaborating together to create an a cappella arrangement of a contemporary song.  I loved getting to hear their ideas and watching as their creative process unfolded.  The piece ended up being the song they were most excited about singing at the concert.  

2.  This past academic year, students were not allowed to sing or play instruments together in the classroom.  This meant that they were doing a lot of work online instead and learning an entirely new musical genre: digital music.  I saw the value in this and the skills they learned from the digital platforms that could in fact be transferred to all types of music making.

So I thought what I might do is design a project for which students will be put into groups of 6-8, they will choose a song that they would like to arrange as an cappella piece, collaborate together to write their piece on a platform such as BandLab, then record themselves performing their arrangement. 

But then I thought about actually putting the project into practice and worried that there would be a large percentage of students for which this project may seem too difficult or just out of their range of abilities.  So I asked myself in what ways could I adapt this project to accommodate students who may have trouble.  

I thought even broader than just the scope of this one project and became concerned with the wide range of abilities that will exist in my classroom and how I would try to bridge that gap every single day in the classroom.  

I want chorus to be a place where every person who chose to sign up feels good about being there.  I want the students who may not have the "natural abilities" of some others to leave getting just as much out of the rehearsal and with the same sense of accomplishment as everyone else in the class.  

How could I use digital media to ensure that would be the case?

Would it be a platform on which students could do daily check-ins and ask for help if and when they need it?

Would it be a living document that assigns roles to students when they break out into sectionals, has the students record themselves and asks them to self-assess and determine which sections need more work?

I'm not sure yet.

But my goal over the next couple of days is to reach out to my own music teachers and ask them about the strategies they used to help keep everyone involved, engaged, and feeling the same level of accomplishment regardless of ability level.