Sorting the Instruments of the Orchestra

In Florida, one of our standards for fourth graders is that they be able to categorize instruments into the correct instrument family. Since we start off the school year with a big trip to the Orlando Philharmonic, I definitely make this standard one that we focus on. Today I wanted to share with you to progression of how I teach sorting the instruments of the orchestra, along with some pretty cool resources that I have come to discover over the years.

Step One: Review the Instrument Families

In third grade, students learned the characteristics of the instrument families of the orchestra. So basically, I expect them to leave third grade knowing the names of the different instrument families and the characteristics of each family (woodwinds use reeds or air to create sound, strings have strings, etc).

So, we start off our orchestra unit in fourth grade by reviewing this information, but also beginning to focus on the individual names of the instruments within each family. I do this through the use of a handy dandy powerpoint and a song about the instrument families that we learned last year. This powerpoint is saved on my thumb drive so I can use it year after year with both third and fourth grade (and sometimes even a little bit with fifth grade).

DAY ONE: Review instrument song and watch a video reviewing the instrument families (this is an adorable little video with a cute little Australian kid named George, and it is just perfect for a quick description and demonstration of the orchestra families).

DAY TWO: Review the woodwind and brass families. Then play a quick sorting game where students must sort instruments into brass/woodwind.

DAY THREE: Review the percussion and string families. Then play another sorting game.

Sort Instrument By Family as a Class

The next step is to work on sorting all four main groups, but with the training wheels still on. I have found a great game for that. It is from the Music Madness SMARTboard resource by the awesome Artie Almeida. The game is called Football Frenzy.

Basically kids tap a little football player, he kicks a ball that has an instrument’s picture on it, and the student has 10 seconds to select the helmet with the correct family. When we play, one kid at a time comes up to the board, but I allow the class to help give the answer as needed. That way, the kids still have the support of the class as we are practicing this new skill.

Sort Orchestra Instruments Into the Correct Family With a Partner

I took a simple instrument bingo game, copied it and cut it into individual pieces, and turned it into a sorting activity. I used to use the dip tray pictured above to sort, but actually stopped using them.

1. It’s hard to find those things (except maybe around Thanksgiving)
2. It’s actually easier to see how they’ve sorted things if they make them into neat lines or groups on the floor instead of piled up in the tray
3. It saves space (I have so many random doo-dads for different activities throughout the year, so storage space is at a premium.

This is sort of their last hurrah before they have their end of unit test where they have to sort by themselves, so we make sure to go over the answers and explain misconceptions (such as why saxophones aren’t in the brass family).

Sort Orchestra Instruments Individually

Finally, we reach the end of the line and students take a quick test where they must look at pictures of a couple different instrument and write down what family they belong to. Kids tend to do really well on this test, because we scaffolded out the lessons and worked them up to the goal with review, classroom and partner support.

So there are some resource and the ways that I sequence them out to teach the instrument families. I hope you find them useful!