6th Grade Orchestra

 Welcome to the 2024-2025 School Year! 

The 6th Grade Orchestra will have their Fall Concert on Tuesday, November 19 at 7:00PM in the Dodgen Theater. 

   If you have any questions, please email Mrs.Culley at ashley.culley@cobbk12.org 

Videos of the Spring Concerts are available  on the Dodgen Orchestra YouTube channel.  

   Orchestra classes will continue to be available to your child through the 12th grade.  Learning to play an instrument and belonging to the school orchestra opens a whole new world of friendship and fun.  Your child will be able to take advantage of music performances and field trips with orchestras at the middle and high school levels as well as other performing opportunities around the county and state. All 6th, 7th and 8th Grade Orchestra students have several field trips throughout the year.  The 8th Grade Orchestra performed at the Georgia Music Educators Association In-Service Conference in Savannah, Georgia in 2007, 2011 and 2015.  They were one of only 3 middle school orchestras from the state selected to perform at this event. This is the highest musical honor that any musical ensemble can receive in the state of Georgia.  In March 2017, the Dodgen Chamber Orchestra was invited to compete at the National Orchestra Festival.  The Dodgen Chamber Orchestra earned First Place—Middle School Division at the National Orchestra Festival.  This is the highest honor for any orchestra in the nation.  The Chamber Orchestra was selected to perform at the 2018 G.M.E.A. In-Service Conference in Athens, GA in January 2018.  The 7th and 8th Grade Orchestras consistently receive SUPERIOR ratings at their annual G.M.E.A. Large Group Performance Evaluations.  The 8th Grade Orchestra also travels annually in the spring to Walt Disney World Florida to perform. The opportunities for playing a stringed instrument after high school are abundant with many universities offering scholarships for orchestra participation.   In addition to each grade level class, there are numerous morning ensembles that orchestra students can choose to participate in. 

Dodgen feeds into two AMAZING high school programs! The Walton High School Orchestra toured Italy in April 2000, performed for the Nobel Prize winning Archbishop Desmond Tutu in New Orleans in April 2002, toured Austria in 2004 and 2007, and performed at the prestigious Mid-West Music Festival in Chicago in December 2000, 2005, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2021. This 50-year-old music festival is considered the preeminent musical event in the country for school bands and orchestras. In December 2008, the Walton Orchestra Chamber Music Program was the first string quartet to ever perform at the Mid-West Band and Orchestra Clinic.  In December 2022, the Walton Chamber Orchestra will perform again at this prestigious festival.  The Walton Orchestra is the only program in the state of Georgia to receive this many invitations to perform at the MidWest Clinic.  The Walton Orchestra has also traveled to Austria in the Spring of 2015 and to Europe in the Spring of 2018.  The Pope High School Orchestra has traveled to Chicago, New Orleans, Florida and New York in recent years performing at universities and music festivals along with their annual performance at the Lassiter Theater.  The orchestras at Pope regularly receive outstanding comments and reviews of their performances. The Pope Chamber Orchestra performed at the 2019 G.M.E.A. In-Service Conference in January 2019.  If you are interested in becoming a member of the Walton or Pope Orchestras, this year will be your opportunity to begin.  Studying an orchestral instrument in Cobb County begins in the sixth grade only. 

1.  “On average, the children who learned to play a musical instrument for many years and were now playing in high school band and orchestra, were the equivalent of about one academic year ahead of their peers with regard to their English, mathematics and science skills, as measured by their exam grades.”

--article published in “American Psychological Association”, June 24, 2019 

2.  “Students who participate in music-related activities between grades 7-12 achieve significantly higher scores on science, math, and English exams in high school 

than non-musical classmates”

--published in “Journal of Educational Psychology”, June 2019

3.  “Musicians are found to have superior working memory compared to non-musicians. Musicians are better able to sustain mental control during memory and recall tasks, most likely as a result of their long- term musical training.”

--Berti et al., 2006; Pallesen et al., 2010 

4.  “A 2004 Stanford University study showed that mastering a musical instrument improves the way the human brain processes parts of the spoken language. Using functional MRI, they discovered that the musically trained brain works more efficiently in distinguishing split-second differences that are essential for processing language.”

-- Prof. John Gabrieli, associate director of MIT’s Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. 

5.  “Musicians tend to have superior fine-motor skills, increased language skills such as vocabulary, literacy, sound processing and retention (memory), and reasoning. 

These benefits appear to persist well into adulthood, in some cases long after the actual training or musicianship has ended.”

-- Kraus, Dr. Nina. “Facing the Music: Musicianship’s effect on the brain.” Canadian Hearing Report, Official Publication of the Canadian Academy of Audiology, Vol. 8 No.2 (2013). 

6.  “Students of music continue to outperform their non-arts peers on the SAT, according to reports by the College Entrance Examination Board. In 2006, SAT takers with coursework/experience in music performance scored 57 points higher on the verbal portion of the test and 43 points higher on her math portion than students with no coursework or experience in the arts. Scores for those with coursework in music appreciation were 62 points higher on the verbal and 41 points higher on the math portion.”

-- The College Board, Profile of College-Bound Seniors National Report for 2006 

7.  “The part of the brain responsible for planning, foresight, and cooperation is substantially larger for instrumental musicians than for the general public. 

-- “Music On the Mind.” – Newsweek, July 24, 2000