“Olympic Games” Movement, Art, and Composition Activity for Grades 1 and 2

Versions of this post have been published in Creative Musicking and has been accepted for publication the forthcoming book, Technology for Unleashing Creativity (OUP).

The Introduction

I really enjoy this project with my young learners. We start off the year with it. It gets them listening for form, for steady beat, and gets them moving, arranging, and composing! Using the Olympic Fanfare from Share the Music series I will share with you my process that I use to get them to the final stage!

Composition Project for Grades 1 and 2

The Beginning

I begin with showing them this picture from the book (you should be able to project this on a wall in your classroom):

Then I ask them what they see and we discuss what types of things they are doing in the listening map and what instruments they may see. They often point out the people in the audience and any of the words they may see.

Once we’ve discussed it, we listen to the music while following along on the listening map. I use a pointer to guide them through it. Here is the song:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m2t5ibb1z0wukna/19_Olympic_Fanfare.mp3?dl=0

Once they have heard it and discussed it, I have my learners divide into groups. My room as 4 coloured music staves (red, blue, green, and yellow) that I use for games, stations or groups that coincide with the coloured mats they are sitting on–instant groups! You may want to group your learners differently and that is okay! Even though there are only 3 sections to this piece, I still have them go to 4 groups because they are smaller areas that are spaced apart nicely.

The Movement

Then, we listen to it while keeping a steady beat, changing the body part that is keeping the beat on every section. The beat changes as we go through the piece so we discuss weather they beats are medium, fast, or slow. The second time we listen I have learners, as an entire class, march for the A section, jog on the spot for the B section, and move “flowingly” to the feel of the music for the C section. Once I feel like they have a good handle on this, I hand out “props” for each station. Red gets mallets to pretend with for the A section, blue gets lummi sticks that are pretending to be torches for the B section, while green and yellow all get ribbons for the C section. You know what’s coming next! Then we put the music on and red will march and pretend to play a drum for the A section while everyone else keeps a beat, then the blue team will jog on the spot with their torches in the air for the B section, and the green/yellow team will move their ribbons to the music. You will have to make sure that they are making appropriate movements for the music.

Once we have established this and have done it at least twice, they begin to rotate through the stations until everyone has had a turn at each station. We have even done this part of the activity for 3 or 4 classes in a row (25 min classes with welcome songs and discussion).

The Arranging

Step 1: Colour

When I am confident that they understand the form, the beat, and the movement for each station we begin our process of rearranging the music. I start with a mini lesson on how to colour this sheet:

I tell them that they can choose any colours they would like to use but both A sections have to be the same and both B sections have to be the same. It may take some a couple of classes to finish colouring this. For your sanity, tell them that they can only choose two colours at a time or they will want to take an entire handful