Class Composition - Day 5

Day 5 - Whew! This is an exciting but exhausting project. Keeping the middle schoolers engaged in a positive way during these discussions has been the biggest challenge so far. 

Today, we took the poems/quotes that we had narrowed down on Tuesday and created an order with them. I was really surprised the variety of ways that the classes wanted to approach their songs and how much discussion there was. I tried to guide the discussion without imputing too many of my own ideas. Some classes were much more verbal and one was like pulling teeth to get some of the students to participate. 

The first class had two poems submitted by two students in the class. The class really responded well to their poems and one became the verses of the song and the other is being used as the opening and closing, sort of like bookends. Theirs will likely have a piano interlude at one point. 

The second class decided they had a good quote that wasn't very "songable," but that they still wanted to use. So, they decided to have someone read that quote before the song began. They chose a simple central idea/quote that could be used as a repeated chorus. 

The third class also was drawn to a spoken word opening, but they wanted it over choral vocalizations (oo's or ah's) before getting to the text of the piece. They wanted to do the same at the end of the piece. 

The fourth class also went with a spoken quote first (the benefit of finding so many good quotes!). They probably have the shortest text, but a strong central idea. I let them know that you don't have to have a super long text to have a good song. 

Three of the four classes were able to settle on a title for their piece today as well. The other class was close. They had suggestions, but we ran out of time for a vote. We'll do that next time. 

We have lyrics!! We're going to attempt some melodies next time.