The Active Listening Project: Carnival of the Animals is a series of five videos that introduce viewers to five movements from Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals.
Each episode is designed to engage learners in active and structured listening. The lesson and accompanying visual materials, designed by IU Jacobs Professor of Music Education Brent Gault, help listeners understand musical elements from the piece (the form, rhythmic content, and musical phrases) as they are listening.
After modeling active learning in conjunction with the music, each episode ends with a final performance of the piece on its own featuring students from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
Accompanying each episode is a lesson plan for teachers that provides the instructional goals of each experience, identifies the Indiana Music Standards (General Music K-12) that are addressed, and includes a list of procedures from the episode, suggestions for assessing skills and information, and possible ways that the activities modeled can be extended in a music learning setting.
