Each week I will add a new musical selection. Listen and choose from one of the response suggestions below. This is an optional activity. If you send me a picture of your response I will post it on the front page of my blog. I will not post your name or Division number. If you do not want me to post your response, please let me know.
Send your responses to Faith.Veikle@burnabyschools.ca
Active Listening suggestions for Primary Students
- collect the sounds with your ears and your brain.
- Write a response.
- Draw a picture.
- Move to the music.
- Make up a dance.
Active Listening Suggestions for Intermediate Students:
1) Lie on your back, eyes closed and just listen. Reflection:
- What emotion did the music make you feel?
- Where in your body did you feel the music?
- Did the music make you feel like moving? If so, how?
2) What did you hear?
- What instruments or voices did you hear?
- Were there any “families” of instruments playing?
- Could you imitate any of the sounds you heard with things you have in your own house?
3) Move
- Try moving to the music
- Can you use regular dance steps?
- Does the music have a steady beat you can move to?
- Does the speed (tempo) of the music change, so that your movements need to change?
- Are there any repeated patterns that you could create a movement pattern to match?
- Can you create a movement/dance piece that lasts the full length of the piece and practice enough to be able to remember and repeat it (perform)?
- Can you add any props to bring more excitement and colour to your piece?
- Create a dance for your puppets or stuffies to do
4) Analyze
- Where in the world do you think this music comes from? [Continent, country, area]
- When do you think this music was composed? [Now? When your parents were kids? When your great grandparents were kids? In olden day Europe when men wore powdered wigs and high heels?! Use your imagination.]
- Can you think of an occasion when you might hear this music? [Party, for Kings & Queens, for working, for a country dance, etc.]
5) Create Visual Art
All forms of art have inspired other forms of art throughout history. A great story can inspire a song, which can then inspire a dance, which can inspire a great costume! And so it goes….
- Can you create a picture that is inspired by the music? [Pencils, felts, crayons, paints, chalk, etc.]
- Can you make a sculpture that shows the energy or movement the music inspires?
6) Read/Write
Does this music: inspire you? remind you of something? frustrate you? scare you!? Could you write something in response?
- Journal
- Poem
- Story
- Radio play
7) Build
Does the music make you think of shapes?
- Build an object in that shape
Is there a form to the music?
- If you hear repeated sections in the music, could you build a temporary structure with found objects in the same form? (eg. verse, chorus, verse = apple banana apple)
Could the music use another instrument?
- Build a new instrument out of stuff laying about the house and play along.
Did you hear an instrument you could build with found objects?
- Example: If you heard a shaker of some sort, could you make one.
Music Tracks
June 8, Moist Breath Zone, written by a principal in New Zealand in preparation for going back to school!
May 25, Short Ride in a Fast Machine by John Adams
May 19, Butterfly by Frédéric Devreese
May 8, See You Again (Charlie Puth, Wiz Khalifa), cover by One Voice Children’s Choir
May 4, Star Wars Medley
La Mourisque, a Renaissance Dance from the 1500s
In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Greig. This music was composed to accompany the play Peer Gynt. In the play this music is the sound track for a struggle between Peer and the Troll King whose hall is inside a mountain. The Mountain King wants Peer to marry his daughter, but Peer does not want to and is trying to escape. Trolls make their home inside the mountain because they need to protect themselves from sunlight. If sunlight shines on them, they turn into stone!
Fur Elise by Ludwig van Beethoven
Ti-Tzu & P’i-P’a, traditional Chinese