Week 13 - Music

In today's workshop we began by listening to a piece of music and we were asked to listen with our eyes closed. As we listened we were asked to jot down a couple of sentences of what came to mind when listening to the piece. I wrote that the music made me think of an underwater scene where crabs were dancing across the ocean floor and octopus were peeking out from inside their caves. We were later told that the title of the piece of music was 'Rainforest' by B'Tutta and although the music had invoked a different natural habitat for me the idea of fluidity and the element of water was definitely present. I think that this would be a great rich learning experience for children and one that you could link to other KLAs especially creative writing in English.

Next up we had to create our own soundscape and we were to represent the distinct aspects of our soundscape visually by creating a diagram which offered a visual represntation of what was going on in our soundscape. Below is the diagram for our soundscape.

We decided to create a soundscape based around a rock concert. We decided that the soundscape would consist of 6 distinct 'events'.

1. feet shuffling of people entering the concert
2. sound check
3. the musical performance
4. hands clapping in applause
5. feet shuffling of people leaving the concert
6. a triangle representing a 'pin drop' once the concert hall is empty  

Here is a link to our 'Rock Concert' Soundscape

I thoroughly enjoyed this activity and think it is something that kids would really get into.

Finally we had to construct a rap which was something i was very happy to be taking part in as i rap in my spare time. This was the first time i have ever felt like an expert at something at uni and boy was it a good feeling haha! I will look to employ rap a lot in my future career as a teacher because it is an art form that children are naturally drawn to and enthusiastic about. We wrote a rap called 'I got no time for school' which you can listen to here: 'I got no time for school'

The lyrics are as follows:

I got no time for school cause my teachers a fool

forget sittin on a stool I don’t follow the rules

they say im a rough neck stuffin up subjects

looking suspect cause I haven’t had lunch yet 

I got no time for school