Kilbirnie School Music Planning – Level 4

Curriculum area: The Arts
Discipline: Music
Level: 4
Timeframe: Six weeks
Syndicate: Senior

Achievement objectives

Practical Knowledge (PK) Students will identify through focused listening, and experiment with, a range of patterns, effects, sound qualities, and structural devices.

Developing Ideas (DI) Students will use musical elements, instruments, and technologies to improvise and compose simple musical pieces.

Communicating and Interpreting (CI) Students will prepare, rehearse, present, and evaluate brief music performances.

Understanding Contexts (UC) Students will identify and investigate characteristics of music associated with particular contexts, purposes, and styles and past and present contexts.

Learning outcomes

Students will:

• listen to and note musical conventions and structures used in composition, such as the blue note, scale and riffs, the patterning of birdsong portrayed by Van Eyke, creating the mood and accompaniment of a song;



• use these musical conventions and structures to create a composition;



• rework, perform, and record their own compositions, making musical decisions as a group, and adjusting the composition throughout the process;



• improvise and explore different musical patterns and sounds, as a group, to create a piece of music;



• use available technologies: record music on different tracks and adjust the sound, with the help of a professional.

Skills and attitudes

• Cooperation – composing music as a group, so everyone is included and valued.



• Communication as a performance, using electronic media.



• Problem solving – extending ideas and communicating them effectively.

Learning activities

Divide children into three groups. Withdraw each group for a session, each week.

1. Igneous group – birdsong

• Listen to the tui sing outside, and to birdsongs on tape. Note how calls are comprised of a few notes.



• Write a cuckoo's call on the board and play it.



• Write up another birdsong, and have a student suggest how it could be played and why. Add to this call and have another student play it, explaining why they played it the way they did.



• Have pairs of students compose their own birdcall using up to four notes. Practise and notate it. Have the students call to each other.



• Play Van Eyke's Nightingale and discuss how the sound is more continuous and covers a wide range but still has some repetition. Number the bird calls then make up a sequence, for example, 1231413 2314 41321.



• Read Issa's Nightingale poem and discuss how to represent the rain.



• Nightingales sing at night and the poem talks of the morning – perhaps the sun is rising. How can we show this? Put the piece together, rework and practise it.

2. Sedimentary group – blues

• Listen to Cut lunch blues by Laughton Pattrick (in the Our Music songbook) and Who's that nibbling? on Helen Willberg's Sounds Forty. Discuss what makes them blues.



• Learn the chords 1, 1V, and V, on guitars, ukuleles, and marimba. Practise these in the blues sequence 1111, 1V1V 1 1, and V V1 V.



• Develop riffs on bars 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, and 12, using the blues scale G, Bb, C, Db, D, F, and G.



• From Choose music (p.101), read Butterflies by Patricia Grace. Discuss. Develop a blues song using the chord pattern, riffs, and improvisation. Rework and practise.

3. Metamorphic group – titiwae

• Remind students of Hirini Melbourne's song Titiwae in the Our music songbook, and sing it. Learn the song's accompaniment and practise the chords.



• Discuss how to create an impression of darkness. What sounds do we need – deep or high, slow or fast, long or short, overlapping, quiet or loud?



• Find instruments to make shimmering sounds on piano with sustained pedal, pipes, cello, marimba.



• Put the points of the glowworm's light against this, using one to eight patterning and glockenspiels. Add the accompaniment and the song. When recording, consider the effect of the cave on the sound – should it echo?

All groups

• Record compositions and adjust the recording, in discussion with the technician.



• Evaluate the group effort and contribution throughout.



• After each session, have students identify and record the process and evaluation in journals – what we did; my contribution; and, what we will work on next time.

Assessment

• Keeping journals throughout the process.



• Teacher observation and questioning.



• Self- and peer assessment of the finished compositions.



• Positive, critical feedback.

Cross-curriculum links

• Mathematics



• The Arts



• Māori

Essential skills

This unit has had wide-ranging benefits in essential skills, especially:

• communication



• problem solving



• social/cooperative



• self-management



• physical

Unit evaluation

Unit duration	Excellent	Good	Fair
Objectives met	Excellent	Good	Fair
Student enjoyment	Excellent	Good	Fair
Suitability of activities	Excellent	Good	Fair
Other

Self-evaluation

Group ________________ Name ___________________

Evaluate how you worked, using a number from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best.

• How well did your group work together?
• How well did your group listen to one another?
• How well did you listen to others?

Write an answer to these questions

• In what ways did you contribute to the group effort?
• What could you do to improve your contribution to the group?
• How have you improved your composition?

Resources

• Guitars, glockenspiels, marimbas, percussion instruments.



• Gibbs, Cathy (1993). Choose music. Masterton: Wairarapa Education Resource Centre.



• Grace, Patricia (1987). Electric city and other stories. Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd.



• Kerr, Elizabeth (1989). Our music (songbook). Wellington: School Publications Branch, Department of Education.



• Madin, John (marimba resources) http://www.marimbamusic.com.au



• Sound inventions http://www.soundinventors.org.uk



• McNichol, Richard. (2000). Music explorer for infants. The London Symphony Orchestra Ltd.



• Music Educators National Conference, 1806 Robert Fulton Drive, Reston, VA 20191. ISBN: 0-9525347-5-4