Hello teacher
Today I'm going to talk a little about my experience and I'm going to point out how I work with composition with children and a little of the work process. So here we go!
I work as a music teacher since 2001, initially as a cello teacher and then with children's musicalization. I studied music at USP and started working in bilingual schools. Then I started researching music education and bilingualism and my interest in acquiring and learning languages and music started to get very strong. In 2011 I defended my master's degree and it's research was based on my experience as a music educator in a bilingual context and the research idea was to point out how the students' musical, linguistic and cultural identity was evidenced in their musical compositions. I presented examples of some of the activities I carried out with my students and included more than 60 examples of compositions, basically songs, and the idea of this blog is to present these and other activities. Unfortunately, I am not authorized to present the composition itself, with the students' performance, but I will talk a little about the results.
So let's start by talking about how to work with composition with children. The first thing I like to emphasize is that doing music creation activities cannot be exclusive to music teachers. Any teacher can make a writing activity more interesting, give it a twist if he turns textual writing into a song. Many times the proposal I presented used a text previously written with the classroom teacher.
Second: The activity of composition never has an end or beginning only in itself. There is always a connection to another activity, another topic, another teacher's project, or a musical concept to work on. This is necessary to make sense to the child. For each activity I suggest here I will say where the idea came from and how it was developed.
Another thing is to demystify the concept that making music is only for those with a gift. Everyone is capable of making music, in any aspect. We have to show this to the students. Show that we don't want them to compose symphonies and operas right away, but that if they want they are capable of composing longer works. It all depends on dedication and study.
One thing I like to do that works sooo well is to record the children's performance. And show them. I usually only record audio, but if it's an instrumental performance in a group it's always good to film. And why record? Usually children are nervous and cannot even remember what they did in detail. By recording, you give them a chance to modify the composition and later the performance. Another point is that the record is more faithful, because often the children are not able to put on paper the way they really thought about the composition, so the audio record makes it easier.
Reading this far, it seems that everything works out like a bed of roses, but it's not quite like that. In my practice I've faced many difficulties but we always find a way to overcome it, right?
One of the greatest difficulties in working on composition occurs at the beginning, as children often refuse to do the activities, either because of shame or because they do not believe in the usefulness of the activity. I always tell my students that music is as important as any other subject and that they should carry out the activities as in any other class. Many times I have to resort to the assessment issue (I have many questions about assessment in music classes, but that is for another post) and most of the times it works well.
With regard to students who are ashamed to show their final work, who refuse to perform the composition, I often leave the recorder with them and they leave the room and do it alone, or with me outside the room. For the vast majority it works very well and I take the opportunity to talk about the importance of respect and appreciation for the work of colleagues.
Another major difficulty is time. For some activities I use 5-6 classes of 50 minutes each to finish the whole process and in some schools this time is not possible for a single project. But why do I need so much time? Depending on the activity, it takes a whole class to present how the composition should be done, the choice of groups, and the definition of stages and deadlines. The next two classes are for groups to get together and get their hands dirty. In the fourth class some groups should be finishing and can start to present. Then I record and show them. Modifications are always made. One more class for all groups to present, listen to the recording and make the final touches and then a last class for self assessment and final evaluation.
What I do to optimize time is from the third class onwards, I separate only part of the class to work on composition and the rest for other activities. So students don't get bored doing the same activity for so many classes and I keep working with the other necessary content.
I think that's enough for today?! I hope I have already helped a little and in the next post I will present an activity that I do with 2nd grade students.
Thank you very much and share, comment, talk, like, explore. Always! See you soon!
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