Experiences and Outcomes:
I can sing and play music from a range of styles and cultures, showing skill and using performance directions, and/or musical notation. EXA 2-16a
I can use my voice, musical instruments and music technology to experiment with sounds, pitch, melody, rhythm, timbre and dynamics. EXA 2-17a
Inspired by a range of stimuli and working on my own and/or with others, I can express and communicate my ideas, thoughts and feelings through musical activities. EXA 2-18a
Lesson Outcomes
After this lesson, pupils will be able to:
- Listen and reflect on a piece of orchestral music
- Create their own Latin inspired rhythmic ostinatos
- Learn rhythms from Bernstein’s ‘Mambo’ and structure them into a piece
- Perform as an ensemble
- Learn musical language appropriate to the task
Curriculum Checklist
Learners will:
- Play and perform in ensemble contexts, using voices and playing musical instruments
- Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music
- Listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory
Activities
Warm up. Begin your session with the children in a circle again and a reminder of the ‘weak-strong’ pulse on body percussion.
Explain that you are going to learn three rhythmic patterns from Bernstein’s Mambo. Clap the rhythms below and encourage your class to copy you.
Bernstein’s rhythms are tricky so we’ve simplified them a little and added words. Using words will help everyone to remember and distinguish between the patterns. You could refer to them as ‘dance’, ‘hot’ and ‘love’. Do feel free to simplify them further or just focus on one or two.
Split your circle into three teams and give just one rhythm to each team. Ask them to practice saying the words and clapping along until they can perform their pattern confidently and neatly. Hear each group one by one and try putting the three patterns together. At this point you might like to appoint a couple of ‘pulse players’ in each team and give them the task of keeping the ‘weak-strong’ pulse throughout.
Instruments. Ask each group to choose an untuned instrument. The final piece will work best if everyone within one rhythmic group sticks to the same kind of instrument (i.e. all of group 1 play woodblocks, all of group 2 play drums etc.). If your children are struggling with their patterns, split them in half and try them on two contrasting instruments.
‘Splashy’ sounding instruments such as cymbals, bells and gongs are not good for this task.
Practise – Ask each team to practice playing their rhythm on their chosen instrument/s and as they are doing this, make sure that each group has a couple of ‘pulse keepers’ on the ‘weak-strong’ pulse. Also check that each team is playing at roughly the same speed so that putting the rhythms together later on will work.
Bring the class back together and hear what they have done making any tweaks needed (such as adjusting the speed). Finish the session with a quick ‘jam’ session using their patterns – simply set up the pulse and signal for each group to play on top, alone and then together thus layering up the rhythms. Don’t worry if this sounds messy, it’s just a fun way to end the session.
FINALLY – keep a record of what you’ve done, who’s in which group and especially who plays what.
Additional resources and a more detailed lesson plan can be found here on the BBC Ten Pieces website;
