“It’s a great opportunity for the kids to collaborate and work together,” said Jennifer Vance, high school humanities teacher at Falcon Virtual Academy in District 49. During a trip Nov. 14, she traveled to Dog House Music in Lafayette, Colorado, with students enrolled in the “Rockin the Ages” course. They worked with professional music producers, writing and performing compositions based on their research of factors shaping music from the 1920s through the 1990s. “What they did was they researched all through the different decades,” said Vance. “And they found out how music has been influenced — based on what’s happening socially, politically — during those time periods. They are actually predicting what the music is going to look like in the next 10 years. So they get to actually have that experiential side.” Throughout the day, students learned the fundamentals and basic skills of various instruments, including vocals, drums, keyboard and guitar. “Part of the experiential project-based learning course is also doing things where they are interviewing DJs, and talking to guest speakers, and they went to a radio station, and they also Skyped with Mark Denis, who wrote trailer music for ‘World War Z’ and ‘Despicable Me 2’,” said Jill Pellegrini, high school English teacher. “I feel like going to this school gives me more of an opportunity to do things like this,” said 12th-grader Sterling Knight-Pinneo, 17.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 23:18:24 +0000
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