Ideas and thoughts of the following lesson are taken from Mark Burrows, "Outside the Lines,"
CREATING AND RECORDING MUSIC
Teaching how to write music is never an easy task. The Grade 2-5 classes have spent several weeks learning music-reading skills, values of notes, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, FACE, bar lines and all that jazz. Students can demonstration notation in pitch, rhythm and meter. However, when I think about composition, I see an opportunity to be creative and take an idea and develop it into something new.
Many agree that the word composition, which comes from the Latin compenere, means "to put together" and is essentially the process of creating a musical work.
HOW ABOUT HERE?
In my classroom, I see my students as creative communicators that can connect to themselves, each other and the world outside our walls. One way to express this is through making music. There are so many ways to show and explore thoughts, messages and feelings and to record it and preserve is not only through conventional notation.
The Grade 2/3s composed a one-line staff song using 3 pitches (low, medium and high). We then assigned each line a note on the recorder.
After practicing and editing their pieces, they shared with each other.
