Title of Piece: Ave Maria

Conductors Name: Liana Booker

Ensemble Name: High School Choir

Composer: Igor Stravinsky

Grade of Piece: High School

Learning Goals

What learners will

Be able to do (behavioral): By the end of the unit, students in the High School
Choir will be able to perform Stravinskys Ave Maria accurately and with correct
phrasing with a success rate of 90%.
Understand (cognitive): Students in the High School Choir will apply the meaning
of the Ave Maria text to the way Stravinsky set it.
Encounter (experiential): Students in the High School choir will write a poem
about someone who is important to them.
Construct meaning (constructivist): Students will realize the importance of Mary
in the Christian religion and therefore realize the importance of this specific text.

Technical Skills:
Intonation throughout the piece
Staying in tune/Listening across the choir

Musical Concepts:
Meter Changes
Phrasing
Being aware of meter changes

Empowering Musicianship:
Connecting with text
Understanding phrasing
Develop listening skills

Partner: Students will be given a copy of Stravinskys Ave Maria and will be
asked to listen to the piece many times for homework. Each student should come to
rehearsal with an idea of what might be challenging when learning the piece. If not
brought up by the students, the teacher should discuss staying in tune, listening
across the choir, and paying attention to meter changes as some challenges that
may arise while learning the piece.

Present: For homework, the students will lean the notes and rhythms of the piece.
At the beginning of each rehearsal there will be a warm-up where the students will
sing half steps up and down from a single note with the Basses and Altos a fifth

lower than the Sopranos and Tenors. They will then go on to sing whole steps an so
on, up to major thirds up and down. This is to ensure that the students are able to
stay in tune while not in unison with all of the other voice parts. This will also help
with listening across the choir since they will have to make sure that the fifth stays
consistent while moving up and down from the original note. For homework
students will be asked to look up the Ave Maria text and the translation and have it
written into their music. They will come to class with an idea of what the
translation means to them and what it could mean to people who believe. Students
will observe how Stravinsky has set this well known text and point out certain
words that he made important through his musical decisions. In class students will
be split up into groups within their voice parts and be asked to mark where they
think phrases begin and end. The choir will come back together and students will
share what they came up with in their groups and the choir will collectively agree
on where each phrase starts and ends. During rehearsal students will be asked to be
mindful of those phrases that were discussed. Students will be asked to speak the
text in rhythm and raise their hand whenever the meter changes s that they are
aware that the meter does in fact change many times throughout the piece.

Personalize: For homework, students will write a poem about a person in their life
who is very important to them. The poem should mention the persons name and
what they have done for them. Students will be asked to share their poems with the

ensemble (if they are willing). The teacher will relate the important people in the
students lives to the fact that Mary, who is the subject of this text, is very
important to Christians because she is the mother of Jesus who Christians believe
to be the savior.

Perform: Students will perform Stravinskys Ave Maria in concert at the end of
the unit.

Assessment
Formative: At each rehearsal, the teacher will take note of what worked and what
could have worked better. At the end of each week, the teacher will ask for some
students to raise their hands and say one thing that they learned or took away from
rehearsals during the week.
Summative: The students will show their understanding of the musical concepts
emphasized in the piece in concert.
Integrative: After the final performance, the teacher will reflect on how
everything discussed in rehearsal was put together at the end. Questions to think
about: Did the students actually understand the meaning of the text? Did they pay
attention to the phrasing? Did they stay in tune?