Harry Potter - Instruments of the Orchestra - Y7

Harry Potter - Instruments of the Orchestra - differentiated keyboard parts.

PDF documents of the music. Video tutorials to accompany the parts are located here: https://youtu.be/NRZ_TX1EUOQ

A whole class keyboard ensemble performance of Harry Potter. Students choose which ‘house’ they want to be in, and then learn their parts in advance ‘flipped learning’. This means that we have time in the scheme to learn about the ‘instruments of the orchestra’ and put together our own class performance.

Time spent doing practical work in this project is more about playing as an ensemble, rather than learning individual parts. Therefore, students learn as much as possible at home, even if it’s on a virtual keyboard.

For the students unwilling to invest the time, they mainly play the ‘Slytherin’ part as it’s the easiest to learn quickly.

The performance always starts off with two students on celeste sounds, one playing ‘Gryffindor’ and one playing ‘Ravenclaw’ as a duet. The rest of the class then start to play, with ‘Slytherin’ forming the string section.

Other keyboards are on a variety of other orchestral sounds, and sections will take their turn to play the clarinet part or the flute part etc on ‘Gryffindor’, whilst the rest of the class continue their parts.

You may notice that ‘Hufflepuff’ does not feature in these videos. The ‘Hufflepuff’ part is the percussion section of the orchestra. We use the percussion to help keep the time. The teacher conducts and the percussionists watch the conductor. The way my classroom is laid out the keyboards face the wall, which makes it tricky for ensemble performance, so a simple bass drum on every beat one and a triangle on beats two and three helps to keep everyone together.

This is always by far the students favourite project.