Week 13, Music.

Music Workshop (Monday)

Creating a 'soundscape' was the focus of the workshop today. When I head the word 'soundscape', I had no idea of what the word meant and I had no idea of what the workshop was to be about. Just as any teacher would, our teacher began to scaffold the lesson by asking us to write down thoughts that came to our minds whilst we listened to a piece of music. We were not given any other knowledge on the piece of music we had to listen to. I thought that this was a useful strategy as with children, although giving relevant information is important, providing them with too many details may reduce their creativity as they get worried to what is 'incorrect' and prefer to replicate the example or idea provided by the teacher. We were asked to create an image in our heads of what this music was expressing and telling us. Once we listened to the piece of music, we discussed with our peers about what we thought about it. I had written 'jungle' but we soon found out that the piece of music was called 'Rainforest'. 

In groups, we then got a piece of paper and began to draw our own soundscape plans. Our group selected the theme 'thunderstorms' and I drew our ideas on the page in a progressive form. 

Our story began with a person driving home on a cloudy and windy day. It starts to rain lightly and then more heavier as the person gets closer to home. The rain develops into a full thunderstorm and the person runs out to his house and slams the door. 

Once our soundscape, illustrated plan was complete, our group collected some percussion instruments and we started to play our instruments so that our story would be represented by our sounds. 

- Large drum: Moving fingers on the surface to represent driving car. Loud banding for thunder. 

- Shaker: Light rainfall

- Maracas: Heavy rainfall.

- Tambourine: Lightening 

- Two-tone block: Alternating sounds to represent running footsteps. 

- Claves: One loud sound to represent door slam. 

This type of lesson is great to develop collaboration and communication skills with children as they need to discuss, plan and create a soundscape as a group. I would love to use this workshop to base a future lesson on. Personally, I think this activity would work best over a couple of lessons with a higher age group (Stage 2 or 3). For the younger stages, I would adapt the activities a bit. Perhaps, Asking students to draw a comic strip that represents a piece of music they hear. 

We then, in the same groups as before, learnt to create a simple rap. It was to be four lines, not necessarily rhyming. This task made me remember my professional experience this semester, I was placed in a Stage 3 classroom and the children composed their own raps on the theme of saving energy. Children generally show interest in music even without having any experience listening or making it (Morehouse, 2013). Although they may not be confident at first, with an appropriate amount of scaffolding, I found that children would be engaged with a task like this. 

However, I had never thought about teaching students how to rap. I had never thought about teaching students to put emphasis on certain words and to keep with a beat. I had been ignorant to the basics of music in creating a rap. This lesson helped me learn that I need to take a couple steps back and really break down components of teaching and student understanding that I assume children may know. 

For our rap, we had a beat-boxer, two people rapping the four lines together, and the remaining helping to put emphasis on certain words. It was fun but quite embarrassing as our rap was not 'educational' at all. But, I can definitely see children enjoying a task as such and engaging in these types of activities. 

References

• Morehouse, P. (2013). The importance of music making in child development. YC Young Children. 68:4, 82-89.
• NSW DET. (2006). Creative Arts Syllabus. Sydney: Author.