CONYERS — It’s a busy week for some of the large bands in Rockdale County high schools.

For the past several months, the bands at Heritage, Rockdale County and Salem high schools have been preparing for annual evaluations and festival performances.

Later this week, Rockdale and Salem will perform at the Georgia Music Educators Association’s Large Group Performance Evaluation festival.

“The evaluation of our bands evaluates us on national and Georgia standards that we use in our classrooms every day,” said Rockdale band director Scott Stanton. “I consider this evaluation to be equivalent to an End of Course Test (or) the Georgia High School Graduation Test ... as it shows our strengths and weaknesses as musicians.”

From Thursday to Saturday, the bands will perform three songs each and then conduct a sight reading activity during the event, which will take place at Stephenson High School, located at 701 Stephenson Road in Stone Mountain.

At 3 p.m. Thursday, the Rockdale concert band will perform “March of the Combat Patrol” by David Holsinger, “Crystal City Overture” by John Edmondson and “Fanfare for the Third Planet” by Richard Saucedo. At 3 p.m. Friday, the school’s symphonic band will play “Hosts of Freedom” by Karl King, “Festivo” by Vaclav Nelyhbel and “Exaltation” by James Swearingen. And at 7:30 p.m. Friday, its wind ensemble will perform “The Black Horse Troop” by John Philip Sousa, “Dancing in Air” by Yo Goto and “Fate of the Gods” by Steven Reineke.

“Overall, our bands have done a good job in preparing for this event,” Stanton said. “I am pleased with our progress and always want our students to excel. Our students have put in a ton of hard work in class and at extra rehearsals. I am looking forward to fantastic performances this week.”

At 4 p.m. Thursday, Salem’s Symphonic I band will perform its selections, and at 4:40 p.m. Friday, the school’s wind ensemble will perform.

“The performance includes statewide approved repertoire graded by ability level,” said Ben Tingle, band director at Salem High School. “Symphonic I performs grade 4 music on a scale of 1 to 6, and Wind Ensemble performs grade 6 music.”

During the performances, highly qualified current and former band directors who serve as judges will mark comment sheets and rubrics to judge each band performance; they also will record live comments that will be provided to each band on a CD after the festival.

“The feedback given from the judges is used as a teaching tool to help students strive for perfection in performing arts,” Tingle said.

Stanton said the judges’ feedback allows students and directors to see areas in which they are excelling and those in which they need improvement.

“This evaluation gives us direction for the future of our program so we can finish the year strong and prepare for our instruction for next school year,” he said.

The bands are rated, but the event is not a competition.

Each band also will conduct a sight reading activity as a group during the festival.

“As part of the process, students are given music they have never seen before and asked to perform it with no rehearsal to test their sight reading abilities,” Tingle said.

While at the festival, the bands also hope to catch performances from other area bands — groups from Newton, Walton, DeKalb and Morgan county schools also will perform at the festival this week.

Heritage High School will hold its own festival Thursday to avoid student scheduling conflicts that arise when attending an out-of-town festival, Heritage Band Director Scott Smith said.

“We use this evaluation to track our progress as an ensemble, and so we can improve in the future,” he said. “It is a good learning experience for our students to be evaluated by qualified judges. It is also beneficial to directors to get feedback on what we are doing.”

Three certified judges will evaluate the Heritage bands, as well as bands from Davis Middle School, Locust Grove Middle School and Union Grove High School, which will perform from 1:30 to 6 p.m. Thursday at Heritage High School, located at 2400 Granade Road in Conyers.

The band directors encourage parents and the general public to attend the festival performances to support the band students.

“We have great support for our Arts programs at RCHS and throughout our county,” Stanton said. “As long as our community, parents, students, administrators and teachers continue to support and place arts education as a high priority, all of our band, choral and other fine arts programs will continue to flourish and our countywide academic goals will be reached.”