In one of my recent posts I said that I was going to be redesigning one of my classrooms for a composition unit. Well, here it is:
At our school (and most schools in Asia) we do not have bells to change classes but little 4 measures tunes. Since the students are so used to hearing these tunes I decided a good introduction to composing would be to write new bells. The students are intimately familiar with the style of the bells so they can easily replicate them. We also have a technology initiative at our school so I had the students using Finale Notepad and a template that I created with the accompaniment from the original bells already placed in.
This is the template and my composition to model what an A+ would look like
The 3 pianos in the middle of the room are for idea generation. Almost every student has taken piano lessons at some point in their lives, so it is easier for them to spontaneously produce a melody there than with notation. They are then able to experiment with the notation to find the melody. They are essentially isolating musical processes. There are also guitars for my few guitar players.
Here are the kids actually doing the project. I had to remind them a few times that a melody (in the sense of what Im trying to get them to create) must be singable. The tables of girls to the left came up with the idea of having the program play the melody and having the entire table try to sing it in order to determine if it was a melody. 7th graders are clever.
No comments:
Post a Comment