More specifically, what is the educational objective of having the students write a reflection after a concert performance?
First, is it even worth writing a reflection, or is it a waste of time? I've tried both ways. My students get a free period the day after a concert. At first, we would listen to the recording and have a brief discussion before they were given their free time, but recently we have just been ignoring the concert reflection and going straight for the free time. Why? Because the students didn't seem to get anything out of it. There were one or two students who would keep the conversation going, but the rest of them just sat there and waited until it was over. The answers were usually thoughtless when I picked on a student to try and get them involved. 'Uhmm, it was good?' or 'We should have practiced it, (Practiced what?) The music.' Those are pretty common. So why bother if the students aren't getting anything out of it? Might as well teach them to enjoy music and skip over it.
However, the problem isn't with concert reflections or free periods, it is a question of how the reflections are conducted. Do the students have to write something? Do they have to be a part of a conversation? Do they have to answer specific questions or just answer generally? Are they giving facts or opinions? Maybe the reason why most students want to skip the concert reflection is because they aren't really getting anything out of it, and they see it as a waste of time. But if they could benefit from it, and know that they are benefiting from it, wouldn't they be more likely to participate? More of them would, at the very least. And skipping the concert reflection ignores a huge, important aspect of being a musician - that is, musicians reflect on their performances to identify strengths and weaknesses. As a professional soloist, I would be listening to my recorded performances for areas that were comfortably good and for areas that needed attention. Obviously, not only is this important for a musician to do, but it is also an important life skill to learn - that of self-reflection.
So now, what is the educational objective of having the students reflect on a performance?
The main objective is for students to identify strengths and weaknesses. An audio recording allows students to focus specifically on the sound of the performance, while a video recording gives a more complete idea of the performance. The important thing to remember about identifying is that facts are more important than opinions. It's okay to say, "that sounded good," unless you don't provide any facts to back up that statement. "That sounded good" and "That sounded bad" is meaningless by itself. It only serves to make someone feel good or feel bad about their performance which is not very helpful in almost every situation. So, in order to identify a strength or a weakness, one has to answer the question "WHY does it sound good or bad?" Be careful of words like: good, great, better, best, well, awesome, rad, perfect, sweet; and their opposites: bad, worse, worst, horrible, awful, nasty, gross, and terrible. These are all opinions. If a student uses one of these words, they also have to explain the facts that brought them to that conclusion.
Put this into practice, and it looks like this: "Okay class, what were some of our strengths at the concert?" Jimmy answers, "We sounded great!" Teacher responds, "What makes you say that? What did we do that sounded great?" Jimmy then says, "We played our instruments really good." Teacher asks, "Why do you say that? What was really good about our playing?" Jimmy hesitates, and then says "It was good." Teacher says, "What made it good?" Then Jimmy says, "I don't know. Call on someone else." What happened here is that the student opened up with an opinion which may have been totally valid, or maybe it was just garbage to begin with. When the teacher pressed for the facts, the student was unable to explain them. Again, this could have been for two reasons. One (the better option) is that the student really doesn't know how to explain why they came to that conclusion, and the second (the worse option) is that they really don't care enough to have an opinion and they just spouted out the first string of words that came to mind. (Maybe they are used to doing this in other situations and it just carried over into the music classroom.) If it's the first option, then use it as an opportunity to teach the class how to talk about music. Put words into the student's mouth and ask specific questions like, "Was it easy to hear the melody over the rest of the group?" Even if they say 'yes' just to get off the hook, they are still learning to talk about music intellectually.
The secondary objective related to identifying strengths and weaknesses is to figure out the reason behind them. What did we do during the rehearsals leading up to the concert that made us stronger? What did we neglect to do that made us weaker? This is important to point out because it makes the students responsible for doing well or doing poorly. For example, if one of the strengths was balance, how did we achieve that? Was it because we pointed out the melody so often during rehearsals? Was it because we actually changed the written dynamics? Was it because we focused on listening during the actual performance? Those are things that are important to point out because then the students will do them more in preparation for the next concert. Another example, if one of the weaknesses was inaccuracy in rhythms, what did we neglect to do that resulted in that problem? Did we lose track of the beat? Did we never really learn how the rhythm was supposed to go in the first place? What could we do differently to turn rhythm from a weakness into a strength for the next concert?
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