Let's talk student led composition.
You're listening to that music podcast with Bryson Tarbet, the curriculum designer and educational consultant behind that music teacher at the elementary music Summit. Each week, Bryson and his guests will dive into the reality of being an elementary music teacher, and how music can truly be transformative in the lives of the students you serve. Show Notes and resources mentioned in this episode can be found at that music teacher.com.
Welcome back to that music Podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about student led composition. And I'm going to essentially take you through the process that I just went through with my second graders through a process that involves me giving a lot of the control back over to the students, which is really cool experiment, because that's definitely something that I want to do more of. And I think it worked out pretty well, it was really kind of cool. It didn't go perfectly. And we'll talk about that a little bit. But I wanted to give kind of a, I'm gonna take this as like, kind of like how I did that episode. So I have been really struggling with my second graders not not really struggling, but like they, I want to give them more, I want to give one of the give them a little bit more ownership a little bit more buy in, and a little bit more opportunity to be creative. So that's where we ended up in this composition activity, where I really wanted them to be able to create their own music in a really simple way. So when I was at the AMI a conference this year, I ended up buying the perpetual pathways book, which is great, if you haven't looked at it, it's been really actually really helpful in my classroom, the last couple, you know, month or so. But one of the activities that they have in there is essentially taking the doing some composition with apples. So a lot of different names of apples. So like we have Braeburn Granny Smith, Red Delicious, basically breaking up into the the rhythms, you know, ties and teaches, essentially, into rest. And so that's kind of what we started with, we did an apple tree, we actually did a song that was in the I believe, I believe the one that was in the proposal pathways was wind up the apple tree, which is really cool. But we've been using apple tree for you know, we I use it in kindergarten for study B, I use it in first grade for time TT, and then I use it in second grade again for DOS. So they've been familiar, pretty familiar with that. So we started with that just kind of as an easy way in and then we had them create as the class group or as a class A B section using different names of the apples. So on my interactive board, I had all the different cards written out and they just dragged it into place. And we were able to clap it and speak it. And then we're able to bring it into the you know, instead of saying the words, say the ties that teach us the rest all those fun things. Now the next time they came in, I wanted to give that control back over to them. So instead of us doing it as a class, I had them find a group, I think there were groups of two or three depending on how the classes were broken up. And you know if there's an odd odd person out, but I said alright, I we're going to make our own compositions using these Apple cards today. And I essentially gave them eight cards or multiple cards, but they but a blank spot they had they needed to come up with eight. So I had the different cards, we had Bray burn, Tata, Granny Smith, Titi, ta, red, delicious, so on and so forth, right. So they have their different cards, and I said aren't you and your group, you and your partner are going to come up with an order that has eight of them. So the way that I did it, I was really super, not really super sloppy. But like I took a piece of paper, I draw a drew eight boxes. So 12345678, kind of like two columns of boxes. And that was their paper, it was super simple. I did it with a sharpie and then copied it. And then I had them take their cards and line it up in those boxes. So they chose what cards they wanted with the different apples. And they were able to put them in the box, we practiced a little bit, we kind of had them do their composition, some of them move the cards around, some of them traded out some cards, some of them actually even traded with another group, which I think it was kind of cool to like, Hey, I we want another one of these, you want to trade over here and like whatever was gonna happen. So that's what we did first, then I had them write down what was on their cards on their paper so that they could essentially save their work. So they wrote this stuff down, they wrote the words and the rhythms, which I thought was which was really important. And then that was all we did for that class. So the next class was around, we pass out the papers again. So at this point, they have their papers with their a card. So they're 16 beats, with the rhythms with the words and with their names on it. That's pretty much all they have. Then I had them take two grams from the middle. And I said, I don't care what colors you get, as long as they are two different color grams. And I said, All right, I need you to split the boxes. So some of them have the first color and some of them a second color and you're just going to draw a box around it with that color. The only rule is don't they can't all be in the same thing. So don't just all Okay, so some of them are going to have to be read in the left column, and some of them are have to be read in the right column. And the same thing where you know, the same, some have to be blue in the left column, so have to blue in the right column, whatever. So it's not just going back and forth. So you might be figuring out where I'm going with this, I then use this as a bin essentially Player A and Player B. So the person in the group, they had to know what was their part. So we actually got into a little bit of part reading off of this, which I think was kind of cool. So they were able to say, alright, you know, the, you know, person one is going to be there do all the red person two is going to be do all the blue, and when we do it together, it will be a full composition. So that was day two. Then the next day, they come through and we did the same thing we did so breaking it up into into groups breaking it up into you know, person a person B, and then we added in some instruments, so I took it a step further instead of just having it everyone play on the same instrument. We kind of did some experimenting with Tambor, so I got out some rhythm sticks, I got out some hand drums and I think I also got out a couple of tambourines, even though that was a little loud. But basically we were saying, Alright, instead of just assigning it to a person, we're gonna assign this color to a different tambor. So now we have students that are completely composed it, they're reading the rhythms, they already wrote the rhythms. They're they're doing tambor. They're using instruments, and they're working together. So if you're keeping track at home, this is a lot of standards and a lot of stuff happening in one activity. And I only did this for maybe 10, maybe 15 minutes or class. And the the way that we ended it was we essentially everybody got to perform everyone, let me rephrase everyone who wanted to perform, was able to perform their as in front of the class, but everybody did theirs at the same time. So I was able to look around and see everybody having theirs. And if you're watching the video podcast, right now you're gonna see cat who is just clearly sad that I am not paying attention to her. So if you don't watch our podcast, head on over to YouTube, so you can see cat trying to get some attention from me. So what I loved about this assignment and how we assign it, this this activity, what I liked about this activity is it was really simple. We took Baby baby steps together. But it was something that the kids really hadn't done much of, because I I will be the first one to raise my hand and say, sometimes I struggle giving up that control. And I need to do parent that because what's really cool is these kids came up with really, really cool things. And some of them even took it a step further, some of them like well, what if we played it a second time through and this time, instead of playing leading from the top to the bottom, and we run from the bottom to the top? And I was like, yes, sure, let's do that. In some of them were not like that. And some of them were like, we're just going to do exactly what I was told. And that's okay, too. I really liked this because it was very student led, all I did was give them the building blocks, essentially, and let them go to town. And it was really cool. It was really simple. And it was nice to be able to sequence it over a few lessons. So that it wasn't us just doing the whole thing all at once. Because let's be honest, if we did this for 40 minutes, like the kids would probably get bored of it. But because we were able to kind of add it in as our rhythmic work of the lesson, it was able to really fit in seamlessly into that sequence. So your challenge this week is to try something that lets the students take control back, whether that be doing exactly what I just did, or doing some variation of it or something else that you have been wanting to do forever, that maybe you saw at a conference and it's been sitting in your folder of shame. Ever since pull it out, dust it off, give it a shot and see what happens. Because what's really cool is when we are when we can give our students the the tools and the structure and the setup to do really cool things. Most of the time, they show us really cool things. So give it a shot. Let us know how it goes send us a DM over at that music teacher or an email Hello at that music teacher.com And if you enjoyed this week's episode, please do us a HUGE favor and review this episode wherever you're listening to. If you're watching on YouTube, leave a comment let us know what you like about it. Not only does this help us help me feel like I'm not just kind of screaming into the void here in my basement studio. But it also really helps us get in front of new educators so that they can get the content specific professional development that they need to be awesome music teacher rock stars just like you. I'm going to leave it there for today. But in case nobody's told you lately, thank you so much for making a difference in the lives of the students that you teach.
