Performing Activities - Songs & Scores

Starter & Plenary Activities

Learning, Listening, Composing & Evaluating Activities

Supporting Activities - Cover & Homework

This unit begins by exploring Holst’s “The Planets” to explore the connection between Music and Space and to provide a stimulus for creative composition work.  Pupils explore how Holst uses musical elements and features, including the use of an Ostinato, in “Mars”, before using these features to compose their own “Mars, The Bringer of War” programmatic pieces.  Pupils learn about the use and manipulation of dynamics including gradations of dynamics and the use of crescendo, performing a theme from “Jupiter” and listening to other movements from Holst’s suite.  Teachers are then given the option as to whether to use Music Technology (Audacity®) to allow pupils to compose an electronic soundscape - “The Missing Moon” - or a more traditional route of using classroom sound sources to compose a class “Planets Suite”, both of which build on skills and concepts learned about during the unit.                                                 Element Focus -  Timbre & Dynamics and Structure & Form

Year 8 Unit 6 - Music and Space

Exploring Sounds, Dynamics and Instrumentation

Audacity

Free Audio Editor and Recorder - ideal for using ICT for sound effects and manipulation in the Music Technology option in lessons 4 & 5A

Great Space Songs

Stephen Chadwick

Available from A&C Black, The pack contains six great songs on the topic of space for top primary. Includes David Bowie's Space Oddity, Eric Idle's The Galaxy Song, a moon walking new version of Debussy's Clair de lune.

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