Dividing Music

Lesson #9: Learning about Form

Yesterday we had another fun lesson at Spanish Oaks Elementary! I had decided that we would do another listening lesson. Listening to music is a skill that can be learned and improved! The class will also soon begin division. So this lesson focuses on form--how we can divide up a song into sections. 

I began by drawing this candy bar on the whiteboard. You were lucky enough to be given a KitKat, but you also have three friends with you who want to eat it too. You are a pretty generous person, so you divide the KitKat into four sections--one for you and each of your friends. But you don't just divide it anywhere--you follow the grooves that are part of the KitKat. So just like this KitKat was divided, we were going to divide a song into sections.

Form Piece

Then the class listened to a creation I had made called a form piece. This essentially is a combination of songs put together that leads to a very basic understanding of form. Before listening to this song, I directed them to raise their hands high when they heard a new section. HINT: the sections would be REALLY obvious.

Form Piece

We listened to the form piece, the students raised their hands at new sections, and there were a lot of laughs from the class. Then I drew a dot on the board. This dot represents the start of the piece. Then I drew an arc and asked the class what was the very first song they heard ("Be Our Guest"). I wrote the title beneath the arc and then drew a second arc ("Do You Want to Build a Snowman"). Next I explained that letters were going to represent these sections. The first section is A. The second section, because it is very different than the first section, is B. After listening to the song again, the class helped me draw and label the rest of the arcs. They caught on to this idea much quicker than I expected! 

After it was all written out, I explained that we divided this song into seven sections and discovered the FORM of the piece. The form of this piece was ABABCDA.

Round Two

Next we did almost the same activity, but with a real song! We used "All Star" by Smash Mouth (famous mainly because of "Shrek").

"All Star" recording

We did arcs and labelled the first half of the song. When the class wasn't sure of an answer, we went back and listened to the song again to check. 

Round Three

For this last song, I had students vote to pick a song they wanted to do. We ended up with "Moana." This round was to be a game! For the first listening, the class raised their hands at ends of sections and I drew arcs. The students had whiteboards and then copied the arcs I had drawn onto their whiteboards. They then had two more times to listen to the song and write in the letters. While the song played I pointed at the arc that we were in as the song progressed. 

"How Far I'll Go"

The students had a minute or so (we were running out of time) to wrap up. I walked around and looked at their whiteboards. The first half of the song, I think every student got right (ABC). The second half was where answers started varying. I gave one freebie answer in the second half of the song that the class was struggling with.

When time was up, I wrote the correct form on the board. Then the students counted up the number they got right and then added their number with the other members of their house. The house with the most points won! Ravenclaw won! The form of this piece was ABCABC.

Wrap-Up

This was a fun listening lesson! I really was surprised at how well the students not only heard the sections but also how they caught on to labeling sections with letters and those letters repeating when those sections came up again in the music. I hope that they can now spot more of this in their own music-listening outside of the classroom!