5 Questions to Ask When Teaching Composition Using Storybook Lessons
Don’t you feel like one of the trickiest skills to teach is music composition? Not basic composition like when you give your students basic quarter notes and eighth notes and let them compose rhythms. That’s pretty easy to teach, right. Once you’re done with that kind of lesson, you feel like a total rock star music teacher!
We’re talking about a more complex composition; the kind that involves composing a soundscape or writing expressive music to accompany a poem. That kind of composition usually leaves you feeling a little less than. Or is it just me? It’s challenging, because our kiddos are just not that emotionally connected to the music they’re playing . . . unless we help them. What’s a teacher to do?
This is where storybook lessons can help. That’s why today, you’re going to learn the 5 steps to help you teach composition skills to your students using storybook lessons. Before we get into the 5 steps, you’re probably wondering why using a storybook is going to be any different than your usual method of teaching composition skills?
Here’s where cross curricular connection comes in. Students are used to discussing the main idea, the author’s purpose, and the reason the characters in a story react in a certain way. They are used to being emotionally connected to the characters in the storybooks they read. It’s not too much of a stretch for them to discuss these same elements when composing music.
So you’re going to need to put on your reading teacher hat and use the elements of a story to connect your students to the characters in the story. From there, composition is a breeze.
- Who are characters in the story:
- Who are the characters?
- How do they feel about what’s happening to them?
- What is the setting of the story:
- Where does the story take place?
- When does the story take place?
- What kinds of sounds will you hear in this place?
- What kinds of sounds might you hear (we call this inference)?
- What problems or challenges do the characters face?
- How do they feel about those challenges?
- What is the main idea of the story?
Let’s use an example from the storybook, What the Road Said, by Cleo Wade. This storybook is slightly more complex, because each page of the story is set in a different place and the character on each page has different challenges and feelings. So instead of the entire storybook, imagine you are instructing your students to compose a soundscape of one page of this storybook.
Let’s take each question, one step at a time.
- Who are the characters? In this storybook, there is only one character. It is a child. On this page, the child feels unsure, nervous, and a little worried about what happens when he or she reaches the end of the road. You’ll ask your students how they might feel if they were walking down this road.
- What is the setting of the story? On this page, the setting is a big empty field. You’ll ask your students what they might hear as they walk down the path. In this case, you might hear things like, soft footsteps, a breeze blowing softly through the grass and trees, and birds singing.
- What problems and challenges does the character face? You’ll probably hear answers like, the child doesn’t know where to go, or the child isn’t sure how to act and what to do once they reach the end of the path.
- How does the child feel about the challenges? In this case, you’ll want to ask how they might feel. You’ll hear answers like, I would feel excited, like I was taking a big adventure, or I would be scared that I was going to get lost.
- What is the main idea of this story? In this case, you’ll ask about the main idea of the entire story. Your students are used to discussing the main idea or the author’s purpose for writing the story. Another way to ask is What’s the story about? Let’s imagine your students tell you the main idea is the twists and turns on the journey of life
Now that you have their answers to the questions, what happens next? How do you use their answers to teach them to compose a soundscape?
Let’s imagine that you’re going to compose a soundscape for just this page and that you’re going to do it as a whole group lesson. You’ll divide your students into five groups and assign each group one question. Each group gets to compose a repeating musical phrase that is 4 measures long. They get a box of 5 instruments of your choice (I usually pick unpitched percussion instruments like a scraper, a shaker, a metal, a wood, and one Orff instrument)
Group 1 is composing music about the character’s feelings as he or she walks down the path. If the character is nervous, they’ll be walking slowly, so the group might use half notes. They get to decide which instruments sound nervous.
Group 2 is composing music about the setting. They get to decide how fast or slow the notes should be, based on the setting and which instruments will create the sounds they might hear in this setting.
Group 3 is composing music about the problem or challenge. If they’ve talked about getting lost, they might want to compose some jogging music (eighth notes) that sound nervous.
Group 4 is composing music about how the child feels about the challenges. If the group thinks the child feels excited, they may use eighth notes or fast quarter notes and use instruments that sound happy and excited to them.
Group 5 gets to compose the tiny melody, based on the main idea of the story. They write out 4 sentences about the main idea, and then they get to decide how to notate the melody, based on the emotions they think the character is feeling. Tentative feelings equal slower notes.
Using the elements of a story is hands down the.best.way to help students connect to their feelings about the story. Your students will compose emotionally savvy soundscapes, based on the instructions you give them.
Want to find out more about this technique? Join me Thursday evening at 5:30 p.m. Central in my private Facebook group.