Today I made the resources for Week 1 of the unit which focuses on creating the "Big picture" through music.
The first resource is a starter activity which aims at introducing students to the new unit - "Telling Stories through Music". Students will listen to excerpts of music and try to match what they hear with a description for example one excerpt sounds like the background music for a haunted house. Created in word, there are embedded links to the audio files (stored on google drive) and students drag and drop the description they think matches it best.
Here are the different descriptions:
The second resource is a "Think Pair Share" Activity for a "Mystery Piece" (Set work - "City Lights"). Students will try to decide what the "story" behind the music is and then in pairs decide on musical evidence to back up their ideas. Once all pairs have finished sharing different thoughts, the teacher will reveal the title and the story. This transitions into the next activity which is a class annotation of an excerpt of "City lights". The class will annotate all the aspects of the composition that help to set the scene. The third resource is a student version of the excerpt with not annotations as well as a teacher version which has a couple of example annotations.
The final activity in the first week includes a group performance activity. Students will compose a musical setting to a specific scenario that they pull out of a hat. Some of the scenarios include:
Visit to the supermarket
Sports game
Children’s birthday party
A nightmare
Swimming underwater
I think these resources are engaging and accessible enough for students of a wide range of previous experiences but I also think that they help to get students thinking about these musical aspects that form the base for this unit.