Class Composition - Day 7 - so much better!

Day 7 - What a difference a day makes! We revisited the idea of composing melodies using the same process as Tuesday. We started with the same texts that we used on Tuesday, but I asked them to get in a group that was working on a different text than they were doing on Tuesday. Since they had done this on Tuesday, the process was much smoother today. They knew how to work with the text and were much more bold at suggesting melodies. 

I had groups that were able to find a usable melody within about the first 10 minutes of working instead of taking 35 minutes like before. I opened their Audacity file and added their new tracks. As they recorded one track, I assigned the group to another text. Some groups during the day only came up with one or two, but I had several groups today that laid down 3 or 4 melodies.

I was really surprised by some of the things that they were able to come up with. Their melodies are so much different than what I would have done with these texts...and I love that! This really will be their song! 

Challenges: Keeping on task was still a challenge for some students. So today, I addressed those students that weren't fully participating in their groups and separated them into their own group and assigned them a text. They actually responded really well to that and were willing to work in the small group. A couple of my students today had problems working in groups at all and found it easier to work by themselves. 

We have an awesome "idea box" in Audacity now. We're going to listen to them next week and try to string it together.