Music as Follow Up

One simple way to make music a part of daily classroom life is simply to be open to the children's ideas about how to integrate music into their follow up work.

Graciela, a child with musical experience outside of school (she took piano lessons), got a lesson on the life cycle of salmon and was stuck for an idea for follow up. I ushered her through the usual ideas: a booklet, a poster, etc. Nothing stuck. Finally, she remembered a piece of work that a couple of children in the upper elementary had made: a film strip box. Into one side of a black box the children had cut a rectangle-shaped hole, with two slits cut into the two joining sides. Though the slits they fed a long strip of paper that had drawings on it. The strip was coiled at each end so that as the children turned the coils, the film strip advanced.

Graciela used this work as inspiration for her "Salmon Theater". Instead of a box, Graciela created a "stage" by folding a thick black piece of card stock into a squared U-shape and standing it up. She strung a little curtain across the open part of her "stage", and on the back she painted a rushing river. Then she drew salmon in various stages of life on a long strip of paper and fed it through slits on either side of her "stage". This alone was beautiful work, but Graciela took it one step further.

She came to me and asked me if I would play the piano for her "Salmon Theater". (We had a piano in our classroom.) I consented to play the piano for her, but told her she'd have to compose something for me to play. (I knew Graciela had some background in reading and writing music from her piano lessons.) As soon as she heard the words "compose something" she ran to the piano and disappeared into her work, treating our class to a series of plinks and plunks on the piano keys. Later, she came back and blew me away with a fully notated piece of music. It had 3 systems of piano notation, each with a different melody written in small quarter notes on the staves. (We had sheets of 3-line and 5-line staff paper on our supply shelf.) She told me that this was the "soundtrack" to her "Salmon Theater" film.

I sat down with her piece and found it easy to read. She gave me directions, of course, saying "Faster" or "More choppy!" or "Play that part three times!" I explained that to indicate that you'd like a player to play a piece fast, you write "allegro" or "fast" at the beginning of the song up above the top staff. If you want to indicate for the player to play something "choppy", you write little dots above each note. If you want to show a player how many times to play a passage, you can write a repeat bar and indicate with a "X" sign  how many times the player should repeat the passage. She was not only open to all of these nuances, but she whisked her score away and returned after a short time with all of these instructions clearly marked. 

I feel very lucky that I had the confidence in music to allow Graciela the space and the materials to create such amazing follow up work. When you have that confidence, even if you aren't a musician, it rubs off on your children. Once you introduce even the smallest musical elements into your class, once you make available for them musical materials, they will amaze you.

The "Salmon Theater" in all its glory.