Listening Graphic Organizers for Choir and Chorus Music Performance Assessment

Over 100 sold! Build critical listening skills with your choir students with this resource of 6 listening graphic organizers that you can REUSE with any listening example. The listening worksheets, with an option for teachers to edit to their needs as well, are designed to prepare students for MPA, festival, contest, whatever your region calls group performance assessments and get them thinking how the judges think. This resource is easily repeatable with choir students because you can continue to choose different listening selections. (You know, the fun part of choir lesson planning - finding performances to share with your students!)

Ready-to-use with the prepared versions with instructions or incorporate these listening graphic organizers in your music lesson plans prior to contest by adding in your own instructions, questions, musical elements, etc. Or, use these listening worksheets as choir sub plans (or chorus sub plans if your region uses chorus) with either the printable worksheets or digital music activities version.

What’s in this resource:

• 2 Printable PDFs (6 pages each)
  • With instructions
  • Blank version for teacher customization

• 2 PowerPoints (7 slides each)
  • Student instruction sheet as the first slide to mitigate potential student-use errors such as deleting text boxes or items
  • With instructions, editable text boxes already inserted for students to use
  • Blank version for teacher customization, contains the same text boxes for student responses

• Links to make a copy of the Google Slides versions of the PowerPoints
  • Similarly, there are multiple links and the student versions have text boxes already inserted as well in the Google Slides. The Google Slides version also contains the same Student Instruction sheet that the PowerPoint files contain.
  • The links are located in the TOU PDF within the zipped file.

What's NOT in this resource: Listening examples. You, the choir teacher, will need to provide your students listening examples. Some ideas to get your started as you choose listening examples: past concert recordings, recording your students currently and having them assess, contacting your choir association to obtain past MPA or contest performances for students to learn from, and, of course, YouTube.

The listening graphic organizers are inspired from the strategy used in Language Arts and Reading classes called "Close Readings". In a close reading, students read the same text multiple times and each time focuses on a different skill. This resources transfers that strategy to improve listening skills in the choral classroom.

Close Listening refers to using the same method to train students' ears. Each graphic organizer says "1st Listen", "2nd Listen", and "3rd Listen". The execution is ultimately up to you as the teacher, but this resource is meant to be used on the same song so students receive deliberate practice. Gauge your students' attention spans to find the best way to reiterate each listen. My personal recommendation is to select a recording and listen to the first half for the 1st listen and only have students answer the 1st listen section. The goal is to train their ears to focus on one aspect at a time. Then, play the 2nd half of the song and instruct students to complete the 2nd listen section only. Finally, play the entire song and have students finish the 3rd listen section with permission to work on the previous sections if they noticed something when listening again. With this route, each graphic organizer should take around 8-10 minutes (With a 3 minute performance: 1st Listen - 1.5 minutes, give 30 seconds to finish thoughts before moving on, 2nd Listen - 1.5 minutes, give 30 seconds to finish thoughts again, 3rd Listen - 3 minutes, 1 to 3 minutes to finish the graphic organizer). Or, play through the entire piece for each close listen. Choose or create the best way to implement this resource for your class!

My recommendation is to use the listening graphic organizers across the week and NOT front load everything in a single class period. For example, after purchasing this resource I would recommend printing the set front and back and giving students the packet at the start of the week. On Monday, have students listen to the piece you want them to evaluate and complete the Tone Quality graphic organizer. On Tuesday, use the SAME performance and have students complete the Technical Preparation graphic organizer. On Wednesday, continue using the SAME performance and complete the Musical Effect graphic organizers. (This could be broken down to Wednesday and Thursday if you want to split it up too.) Finally, at the end of the week have students complete the Final Score graphic organizers with partners.

This resource contains 6 listening graphic organizers:

• Close Listening for Tone Quality
• Close Listening for Technical Preparation
• Close Listening for Musical Effect
• Final Score
  • This activity is an extension that involves collaborating with two other classmates to facilitate discussing their evaluations as if they were the three MPA/festival judges. Feel free to omit this or customize the blank version to fit your needs.

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Please leave a review to share your experience! With each review you write, TPT gives YOU credits to get future purchases for free. :D

If you use this in your choir/chorus/music class, then post how you’ve used it in your class in an Instagram story and tag me @cathyschoirclass! 

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Additional Music Resources & Digital Music Activities for Choir/Chorus Classes:

Copyright & Music Digital Unit - Music Distance Learning

Vocal Styles & Ensembles Digital Unit - Music Distance Learning

BUNDLE - Solfege Skills Lv. 1 -3 Digital Activities

BUNDLE - Solfege Skills BOOM Cards - Interactive Task Cards for Ear-Training

BUNDLE - Composing by Chance (All Activities) - Music Distance Learning

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Let's connect! Cathy @cathyschoirclass on Instagram

For teaching ideas, classroom inspiration, and other aesthetically pleasing things, follow me on Pinterest.

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