I’m doing a 4-week residency at a STEAM Summer School right now, working with 7th graders for 2 hours every weekday. Most of them hadn’t seen much taiko, so we’ve been watching videos to build familiarity with and reduce the (intimidating) mystery around taiko performance. Don’t underestimate the power of this kind of referencing! It’s also been helpful because this age just can’t spend 2 hours in a row on the drum, so I’ve needed lots of other activities to support their learning.
I’m teaching Matsuri Daiko, so I’ve included several videos of that song. For convenience, here are the videos I’ve show:
Soh Daiko (s/o to Tamiko and some great MC’ing)
Senryu Taiko (this one’s great because the song structure is relatively simple, so my students could pick out the body easily)
World Music Students, San Francisco School for the Arts (this one’s great because the performers aren’t much older than the kids I’m working with now)
(I’m open to suggestions, please let me know if you know of other versions I should show!)
I’m using Harvard Project Zero’s See Think Wonder to help my students to engage more deeply with the videos. See, Think, Wonder requires multiple viewings of the video. For longer videos, I show the whole thing during step 1, but only an excerpt for steps 2 and 3. Here’s how it works.
Show the video. While students watch, they write down things they see. They only write down what they can directly observe. For example, “I see people with smiles on their faces” rather than “I see happy people.”
Show the video again. This time, students write down what they think about what they’ve observed. For example, “I think the people performing are happy.”
Show the video a third time, and this time, students write down what they wonder. For example, “I wonder how long it took them to learn this song.”
This routine is a great way to promote thoughtful engagement and I highly recommend it. It’s been cool to watch my students progress from “I wonder how long it took them to learn this song” to “I wonder how they decided who would play their solo first.” It’s textbook arts integration (literally) and can be applied to almost any subject, arts or academic. Let me know if you try it, and happy teaching