A play and study guide by Alan Gotlib * Music by Laura Silberberg

Sample Activities from In Harmony

In Harmony includes 25 activities that you can use to teach children about working well with others. The following is an example of these activities.

Feelings

Have students, in small groups, re-enact the scene in which the Strings accuse the Percussion of sabotaging their instruments and in turn, the Percussion accuse the Strings of sabotaging the Brass. Discuss the feelings of each character involved. Another way of examining the feelings is for the teacher to call “freeze” at different points during the scene. The teacher then points to one of the characters who must speak aloud what she/he is feeling at that moment.

What will hopefully emerge is that there is an element of fear involved in prejudice – fear of that which is different. The scene at the end in which the instruments realize how good they sound together might also be treated in this way. Although everyone is excited at the time, not all students will agree that the instruments have changed their opinions so quickly. Attitudes are seldom changed in a moment.

Different Voices

Have your students work in pairs for this activity. Begin by explaining that people speak in different ways. That is, the language and expressions used by a parent may be quite different from those used by a child. In In Harmony, the personalities of the individual instrument sections were quite different from each other. Set up situations in which instruments of different sections must have a conversation. For example, how would Flute tell Violin 1 that they’re supposed to play a duet? How would Timpani ask Baritone for a favour?

Power of Words

Have students examine expressions in which words like black, yellow, Jew, gay are used in contexts other than to describe a group of people. For example, a black mark on your record, yellow-bellied, Jewing someone down, that’s so gay. Help them to understand how some of these expressions with negative connotations might adversely affect people’s attitudes towards these groups of people.