Music 1 | Performing - Playing

March 26th, 2018 | 8:04 pm

Tutorial Overview: - Creating percussion scores - Reading simple rhythms and melodies - Using chords to make simple accompaniments

“Immersion in the Arts can improve an individual’s sense of enjoyment, purpose and identity, positively changing the direction of people’s lives” (Ewing, 2011, p. 9).

During this week’s tutorial, we experimented with tuned and un-tuned percussion instruments and began to deconstruct how students might begin to learn music notation through percussion scores within the primary classroom. In Stage 1, students use basic symbol systems to represent different sounds through graphic notation. This can include “words, pictures such as suns and triangles, and lines of varying lengths” (Board of Studies NSW, 2006, p. 33). For instance, students might choose to use drawings or symbols to represent the timbre, pitch and dynamic quality of different instruments; a soft, high pitched triangle sound could be written as a small triangle symbol, whereas a loud, ringing tambourine sound can be written as a large circle symbol.

As students’ knowledge of music notation develops through Stage 2 and 3, it is beneficial to refer to a musical note value chart that shows the name, symbol and value (number of beats) of each note, i.e. semibreve, minim, crotchet, quaver, semi quaver, as well as their corresponding rest symbol. Once students have an adequate understanding of these features, teachers might choose to use a percussion resource such as “Jellybeans And Other Suites” (Jozzbeat Music Publishing, 2014) to learn a simplified percussion arrangement. Arrangements are particularly useful if there are multiple colour coded parts, as this is helpful to get students involved in the sight-reading process as they watch and listen for their turn to play.

Music 2 | Performing: Singing & Movement

April 9th, 2018 | 7:34 pm

Tutorial Overview: - Vocal techniques and repertoire selection - Singing in parts (rounds, partner songs, part-singing) - Using simple choreography in ensemble performances

You know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York!

This week’s tutorial specifically addressed vocal techniques, using simplified choreography within vocal ensembles, as well as how to teach and select musical repertoire for Early Stage 1 through to Stage 3. When selecting age appropriate repertoire for students, teachers should consider the range (tessitura) and rhythm of the piece, as well as its melodic contour. Ideally, pieces should sit within a 5th or 6th  range, have a simplified rhythm with little or no syncopation, and use a pentatonic scale. Melodies should be repetitive (use melodic motifs or ostinatos) and travel in steps rather than leaps, and teachers should refrain from complex part singing until students have become more confident. 

To prepare for singing, it is important that teachers guide students through several vocal warm ups to improve their range and technique, and to ensure students maintain vocal health. Warm ups should be fun and challenging, and should focus on improving pitch accuracy, articulation, crossing between chest and head voice, and breathing using the diaphragm. During the tutorial, we used the example of “Calypso” by Suzie Davies to explore several musical concepts (structure, pitch and tone colour) as well as applying the music to simple choreography. Lyrics such as “Calypso up, Calypso down, Calypso turn around” allow movements and direction to form naturally and are easy for students to memorise as part of an ensemble arrangement. Teachers might also consider ways of making the performance more interesting, such as selecting different students for ‘pop out’ solos, or having one group of students sing something whilst another group sings something else at the same time, so that two different melodies/rhythmic patterns overlap. 

Music 3 | Listening & Organising Sound

April 16th, 2018 | 8:24 pm Tutorial Overview: - Creating simple compositions - Selecting music for listening activities with a specific musical focus - Integrating music with other KLAs and technology “Like the other Creative Arts, music has its own language that allows us to understand, appreciate and discuss diverse pieces of music” (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p. 111).   In this week’s tutorial, we looked at how students can use technology such as GarageBand to compose simple themed compositions and soundscapes, as well as using the concepts of music to listen and respond to repertoire. When using technology to create musical compositions, students are actively involved in making musical decisions and using reasoning to justify their choices. For instance, teachers can discuss with students the ways in which composers create music that sounds ‘scary’, and the compositional techniques that invoke suspense or tension for the listener. This might include the use of a drone, rhythms that incrementally increase in speed, rising pitch, dissonance, and extreme high and low pitch. Using GarageBand instruments and available sound effects, students should be given the chance to experiment with these musical techniques and use instruments that otherwise might not have not been available to them prior to accessing technology. A soundscape should tell a story through music, and therefore should also establish setting and theme. In our ‘scary’ soundscape, we used a pizzicato string technique on the violin by tapping our fingers on the strings and holding the pizzicato ‘button’ on the left of the fingerboard. Students should justify their decision to use these techniques, such as that it mimics footsteps or creaky floorboards. Through the use of technology and an understanding of duration, structure, pitch, dynamics and expressive techniques and tone colour, students can begin to analyse musical compositions using appropriate terminology.

Music 4 | Integrating Music in the Wider Curriculum

April 23rd, 2018 | 7:46 pm Tutorial Overview: - Connecting Music and Literacy - Connecting Music and Maths - Exploring Music through other KLAs “A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood. A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good.” - The Gruffalo (Donaldson & Scheffler, 1999). Teachers should integrate music throughout the primary curriculum; whether this is within literacy, mathematics, science, history and geography or other key learning areas. During the tutorial, we explored how students might further engage with literature by representing a key scene, moment or character from a story of their choosing through music. Teachers should encourage students to compose a musical sequence that incorporates “changes in dynamics, pitch, tempo and tone colour to support an authentic and interesting delivery of the piece” (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p.125). Using a storybook that is textually rhythmic and uses a repetitive rhyming sequence or motif is useful in developing compositional tasks, and Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s “The Gruffalo” (1999) is an excellent example. This book features contrasting characters such as a small mouse and a large ‘scary’ monster, allowing students to play with various sounds and opposing musical representations. Students can use different instrument families to represent these contrasting characters; a deep bass drum might be used to represent the Gruffalo stomping through the forest, and a soft triangle might be used to respond as the mouse.  

April 23rd, 2018 | 8:05 pm In the Hall of the Mountain King, composed by Edvard Grieg, 1875. Example of a musical excerpt suitable for students to analyse using their expanding knowledge of each of the concepts of music. Students should consider how the piece explores contrasting ideas through tone colour, pitch, structure, duration, dynamics and expressive techniques and texture. Teachers should particularly draw attention to the piece’s use of gradual crescendo and accelerando, and how the piece changes from a thin to a very thick texture. To link with literacy, allow students to consider how the piece might tell a story. Consider asking prompting questions such as “what do you think is happening in this section?”, “what sort of character is portrayed through this instrument?” etc.

Dance 1 | The Body

May 7th, 2018 | 8:56 pm Tutorial Overview: - What movements can the body make? Body shape, body parts, the 5 body actions - Stimuli: the spoken and written word “Through Dance, students represent, question and celebrate human experience, using the body as the instrument and movement as the medium for personal, social, emotional, spiritual and physical communication” (ACARA, 2018).

Dance has the capacity to engage, inspire and enrich our students. It caters for the whole child, providing holistic learning that excites the imagination and gets students thinking and interacting with people and the world around them. Learning in and through dance “enhances students’ knowledge and understanding of diverse cultures and contexts”, and develops “personal, social and cultural identity” (ACARA, 2018).

In this tutorial, we explored activities that improve students’ five core body skills; strength, coordination, balance, flexibility and stamina. In small groups, we were each given a different body skill and developed a micro teaching presentation, outlining the skill and allowing students to engage in a brief activity which demonstrated the skill. Our group targeted ‘balance’, and we asked our students to use problem solving and mathematical skills to balance in different groups of people using various parts of the body, i.e. one hand one foot, two hands one foot, etc. Through this, students needed to consider weight distribution and counterbalance, and use communication skills to work as a team.

Dance 2 | Effort & Dynamics

May 14th, 2018 | 7:32 pm Tutorial Overview: - How is the movement controlled and implemented? The movement qualities of sudden, sustained, heavy, light, direct and indirect - Stimuli: music and sound

“If students realise that they can use their bodies to interpret their feelings, ideas, beliefs and needs such an understanding has the potential to affect their whole approach to learning” (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p. 38).

When composing in dance, learning experiences “should use material that is meaningful for primary students so they learn how dances are made to communicate feelings, themes or issues within cultural traditions and historical and contemporary contexts” (Board of Studies NSW, 2006, p.16). As musical theatre is a form of creative storytelling that combines all art forms – dance, drama, music etc. – it is highly effective when used as material to reinforce skills taught within a lesson. As explored in the tutorial, Tim Minchin’s “Revolting Children” from the musical “Matilda” is an excellent piece to use to teach a whole class dance, giving students the stimulus to explore different characterisation through movement. Students should have creative input by offering suggestions for staging, such as starting in a clump and progressively moving out into the space.  

We also explored isolation warm ups by playing with the dynamic quality of movement through ‘follow the leader’ style activities. Students should be given the opportunity to rotate between swing, percussive, lyrical, vibratory and sustained movement, whilst also adapting their understanding of space and using mixed pathways and levels. 

Dance 3 | Space: General & Personal Space

May 21st, 2018 | 8:37 pm Tutorial Overview: - Place, level, direction, pathway and size - Stimuli: Art and other visual objects This tutorial examined general and personal space and expanded upon the ‘follow the leader’ style activities explored within the previous tutorial through locomotor and spatial learning experiences. Space is “concerned with where the body can go” (McGill, 2018, p. 2), and from Early Stage 1 through to Stage 3 students should explore the concepts of travelling, turning, leaping, contracting and expanding in various ways. With regards to practitioner Laban’s theory of movement, human movement can be categorised into: - Direction (direct or indirect) - Weight (heavy or light) - Speed (quick or sustained) - Flow (bound or free) (cited in Theatrefolk, 2017). Teachers can choose to explore these elements as well as using different levels, dimensions and pathways in various ways. For example, whilst using pathways students can choose to move in straight or curved lines. They might choose to make their actions bigger by expanding their movements, or smaller by contracting the same movements, using different parts of the body. From a teaching perspective, it is important “enable students to make decisions about their creative process so they can develop ownership of their dance activities” (Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p. 40). 

Dance 4 | Integrating Dance in the Wider Curriculum

May 28th, 2018 | 8:46 pm Tutorial Overview: - Connecting Dance & Literacy - Connecting Dance & Numeracy - Exploring Dance through other KLAs “Education in dance is fundamental to the education of all students. Dance is a significant way of knowing with a significant body of knowledge to be experienced, investigated, valued and shared” (The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum, cited in Gibson & Ewing, 2011, p. 36). Sensory learning refers to the use of visual, tactile, auditory, ideational and kinaesthetic stimuli to actively engage students through different mediums. As teachers of creative arts, we tend to create lessons that sit within our comfort zone, by using stimulus that we feel is most accessible and adaptable. Teachers will often use a visual or auditory stimulus as the framework of their lessons, avoiding ideational and tactile material. In this weeks tutorial, we were given the task of developing teaching ideas using one of these types of stimulus. As a pre service teacher, I felt most comfortable with using a visual stimulus to create a movement sequence, as I feel it gives the greatest opportunity for literal as well as figurative interpretation. In pairs, we chose to reverse the movement given in the image, and create different levels to mimic the metamorphosis of a butterfly. In a primary classroom context, performing a similar sequence to the class allows for further interpretations to be discussed, and with regards to the ‘Appreciating’ component of the Dance K-6 syllabus, this “provides students with opportunities to analyse, value and reflect on their own work and the work of others in terms of personal, cultural and structural meanings” (NSW Board of Studies, 2006, p.17). 

May 30th, 2018 | 6:34 pm Tutorial Visual Stimulus Photograph: Example of a visual stimulus that could be given to students to aid in sensory compositional tasks. Students might choose to interpret the stimulus material literally or metaphorically to create a simple count of eight composition. Students might consider reversing the movement, or creating different levels and manipulating the dynamic quality of the given stimulus.

References

May 31st, 2018 | 6:03 pm Australian Curriculum, Assessment & Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2018). Dance Rationale. Retrieved from https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/the-arts/dance/rationale/

Davies, S. (1999). Calypso. On Razzamajazz [CD].

Donaldson, J., & Scheffler, A. (1999). The Gruffalo. London: Macmillan Children's Books.

Ewing, R. (2011). The arts and Australian education: Realising potential. Melbourne: ACER. [www.acer.edu.au/documents/AER-58.pdf] Gibson, R., & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the arts. Melbourne: Palgrave Macmillan. Jozzbeat Music Publishing. (2014). Jellybeans and Other Suites. Retrieved from http://www.jozzbeat.com/JB1

McGill, I. (2018). Dynamics Workshop 3. Retrieved from https://elearning.sydney.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-4977807-dt-content-rid-21108540_1/courses/2018_S1C_EDUP3008_ND/Dynamics%20Workshop%203-%203rd%20year.pdf

NSW Board of Studies. (2006). Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus. Retrieved from https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/wcm/connect/c19a0ed2-4310-481d-ad6b-a6acadad42b3/k6_creative_arts_syl.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=ROOTWORKSPACE-c19a0ed2-4310-481d-ad6b-a6acadad42b3-lzilpJk

Theatrefolk. (2017). The Eight Efforts: Laban Movement. Retrieved from https://www.theatrefolk.com/blog/the-eight-efforts-laban-movement/