Learning, Listening, Composing & Evaluating Activities
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Performing Activities - Songs & Scores
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Starter & Plenary Activities
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Supporting Activities - Cover & Homework
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Journey Into Space from Musical Contexts provides a range of fun and exciting
music activities and learning opportunities combining singing, performing,
composing and listening and appraising with all of the resources you’ll need
in one place! Ideal for non-specialist music teachers (with a wealth of
supporting media files to model tasks and a detailed scheme of work and
lesson plans) and a wealth of fresh inspiration for music specialists.
This unit has cross-curricular links with the popular primary topics of The Solar System,
The Planets, Space Exploration and Space Travel. This unit takes, as its
starting point, Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” as a basis for creative
composition tasks leading to a class musical performance of a “Journey Into
Space”. It’s based on the Musical Contexts Key Stage 3 Secondary unit “Music
and Space”, with various modifications for Key Stage 2 and Primary
pupils. Pupils listen to different extracts from Holst’s “The Planets”
at various points throughout the unit, beginning with “Mars, The Bringer of
War”, exploring how Holst basis this movement on an ostinato pattern.
After performing and creating their own ostinato patterns and adding dynamic
contrasts in the form of crescendos and diminuendos, pupils create their own
descriptive “Mars” pieces incorporating an ostinato and other musical
features which Holst uses in his movement. Central to the unit are the
concepts of mood, tempo, dynamics and instrumentation (or timbre) and these
are explored through Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” which pupils
explore in terms of a piece of descriptive music used to describe a “Rocket
Launch”. Finally, pupils create musical soundscapes for the other
planets, structuring these with the opening “Rocket Launch” theme for a class
musical performance of their Journey Into Space. There’s an optional
improvisation task which can be used in the final performance where selected
pupils create a spontaneous soundscape to describe the final planet in their
journey – Pluto. |
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Scheme of
Work |
Lesson Plan
(PDF) |
Lesson Plan
(DOC) |
Lesson
Bundles (ZIP) Download all the resources you need for each lesson
(excluding video files) in a ZIP file. |
Lesson 1 Exploring Holst and ‘The Planets’ |
Resource
Bundle |
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Lesson 2 Exploring “Mars” and “The Mars Ostinato” |
Resource
Bundle |
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Lesson 3 Exploring “Lift Off” Music & Dynamics |
Resource
Bundle |
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Lessons 4 & 5 Exploring a class “Planets” Suite |
4 & 5 |
4 & 5 |
Resource
Bundle |
Lesson 6 A Class “Journey Into Space” |
Resource
Bundle |
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Learning about Holst and “The Planets” |
“Mars, the Bringer of War” Composing Sheet |
“Mars, The Bringer of War” Evaluation Sheet |
Listening to “Jupiter” from ‘The Planets’ (uses Audio 4) |
Listening to Moon Music (uses Audio 6) |
Listening to “Saturn”, “Uranus” and “Neptune” from ‘The Planets’ (uses Audio 7) |
The Planets Composing Cards |
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“Journey Into Space” Evaluation Sheet |
Pluto - The Missing Planet Improvisation Sheet |
“Also Sprach Zarathustra” (uses Audios 8 & 9) |
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Space
Exploration (01:01 9.38MB) |
Apollo
11 Lift Off (01:03 10.6MB) |
Earth
from Space (00:26 5.88MB) |
Eagle
has Landed Apollo 11 lands on the surface of the
Moon (01:47 21.8MB) |
Video
5 Neil Armstrong describes the landing
of Apollo 11 on the Moon (taken from
BBC) (00:26 5.88MB) |
Listening
to “Mars” and “Venus” from ‘The Planets’ (uses Audio 1) |
Listening
to “Mercury” from ‘The Planets’ (uses Audio 3) |
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Themes from “Jupiter” from ‘The Planets’ (uses Audio 4) |
Planning the Class “Journey Into Space” (best enlarged to A3) |
The Planets Card Sort Activity (uses Audio 5) |
My Journey Into Space Learning |
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(Example on Audio 2 & MIDI 1) |
Score 2 - “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (best enlarged to A3) |
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Journey into Space Key Words Word Search |
Journey into Space Kriss Kross |
Gustav Holst and The Planets |
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