SHARE: Engineering Design Process Lesson 6

The final lesson in the Engineering Design Process was a big success! I felt like I learned just as much as the children did from teaching this lesson. It was a big challenge, and there are definitely some improvements I would make for next time. But I am so proud of these students and so happy with how this lesson series turned out. It's been a great semester of arts integration!

Click HERE to see my plan for Lesson 6: SHARE.

This lesson, like those that came before it, was designed to highlight and integrate the similarities between the disciplines of music and science. In the performing arts, sharing with an audience what you have created is an integral part of the creative process. I was excited to find, when doing preliminary research, that sharing is also an essential step in the Engineering Design Process. It was this similarity that led to the birth of the entire Engineering Design Series. If an Engineer never shares his or her designs with colleagues, mentors, and peers, much creative inspiration can be lost. So it is with music as well.

With that in mind, here is our ultimate rendition of "I've got a Car:"

One thing that really struck me as I taught the final lesson was how much these students have improved over the course of the last several lessons, even on this simple song! When they first learned this fun folk tune, most of these students were chant-singing (using a speaking voice register) instead of really singing (using a head voice register). Although I noticed this, producing a good vocal tone was not the objective of my lessons, and with limited time I decided it was not something I should take a lot of time to correct. I made a few subtle corrections here and there and frequently changed the starting pitch of the song, to help the children become accustomed to singing it in different keys and different registers. But honestly, I think the thing that helped them the most to improve their tone and begin really SINGING this song was the sheer number of repetitions. Between lessons 3, 4, 5, and 6, we definitely sang this song at least a hundred times. I thought they would get bored. I thought they would stop paying attention to the musical qualities of the song, with everything else they had to focus on. But that's not what happened; those hundred repetitions really had an impact, and the children's singing improved far more than I ever anticipated. As a teacher, that was a wonderful realization!

Before sharing their Maps, which I had collected from the students at the end of the last lesson so they wouldn't lose them, I gave the children their Maps back and had them sing through "I've got a Car" a few times to re-familiarize them with their maps, making sure they could follow along themselves before showing them to their peers. 

           

I scanned each child's Music Map into the computer, projected it onto the SmartBoard, and had the child who created it come up and present his or her Map, one at a time, while the other students sang and traced along.  

 

This activity opened up some really great learning opportunities! One girl was afraid to come up and present in front of the entire class, but she learned to conquer her fear and, with a little help and encouragement, did a great job leading everyone through her map. Another boy traced his map and gave another student a great idea for what he might like to add to a Music Map next time; this led to a brief discussion on how Sharing not only helps us learn, it helps us get new ideas and learn from others as well. Another girl traced a zigzag line at the end of her map and realized he had a few to many zigs; we sang that line of the song together a few times and counted exactly how many zigzags were necessary to reflect the way the music sounds. 

All of this led to a few moments of conclusion, once again, with the Engineering Design Process. After Sharing their maps, many of the students had discovered ways they could continue to refine their designs or gotten ideas for entirely new designs which they could use to start the whole process again. The work of creativity is never finished, but it is worth doing, and it is very rewarding. That, more than anything, is what I hope my students take away from their ArtsBridge Adventure.

CREATE and IMPROVE: Engineering Design Process Lessons 4 and 5

In my next two lessons at Edgemont Elementary we continued our adventures in fun integrative music/science lessons! This time we focused on the fourth and fifth steps of the Engineering Design Process: CREATE and IMPROVE. Because these lessons were so closely connected- even more so than the other lessons in the Engineering Design Process series- I chose to include them in one blog post.

For this lesson, I combined two elements that had been introduced in previous lessons: Music Mapping (as we first learned it, not with icons) and the song "I've Got a Car." After learning about Mapping and becoming very familiar with the song, it was time to put the two of them together and let the kids create their own Music Maps for "I've Got a Car"!


Click HERE to see my lesson plan for Lesson 4, or click HERE to see my plan for Lesson 5.

Before asking the children to make their own Music Maps, we took some time to review the concept and procedures for Music Mapping, as it had been a few weeks since we last did this. We traced Dr. Brittany May's Music Map for Brahms' Hungarian Dance and discussed again the way the lines and shapes on the Map LOOK the way the music SOUNDS.

A Music Map, we decided, is like a treasure map: if nobody can read it, it's not going to help anyone find the treasure (in this case, a better experience with and understanding of the music). Then the class went through a carefully crafted process of learning to create their own Maps.

After this, I showed them several different Maps that I created, all illustrating the song "I've Got a Car:" I avoided doing this until after the students had already had a few simple tries at making their own music maps to this song, because I wanted them to try if for themselves and not just copy what they say me do. Here are the simple Maps I created:

 

For simplicity's sake, we only Mapped the first part of this song.

As we traced these maps, I asked the students to evaluate how easily or how well they felt they were able to read each one. When we reached the last two maps, it was very clear to them that something wasn't right! These maps were not easy to follow at all; they didn't look like the music sounded like. I used this activity to help the students understand by experience that there are LOTS of different and equally good ways to create a music map, but in order to be successful it must LOOK the way the music SOUNDS. Random scribbles do not a Music Map make.

One thing that really helped the kids succeed in this lesson was being able to easily make, erase, and refine drafts of their Maps. Each student had a small personal size whiteboard and marker at his of her desk, and these were very helpful in the Music Mapping process!

The students clearly worked hard that this assignment; it was fascinating to watch them as they sang the song together, traced their maps, sang the song on their own or even audiated it, working and working on their designs. It was the most focused group of first graders I've ever seen!

One of the best things about this lesson in my mind was how clearly it integrated both Music and Science. The first-grades were literally creating and testing their own DESIGNS; this is exactly what the Engineering Design Process is meant to do! After refining their own music maps, each student copied his or her design onto a piece of paper and gave them to me for safekeeping until it was time for the next lesson: SHARE.

Here are a few of the things they came up with:

 

The children clearly worked hard at this lesson, but they also seemed to have a lot of fun. "I've Got a Car" is a surprisingly versatile folk song, especially for being so short and simple, and its fun actions always make it a crowd pleaser with children at this (or really any) age. Everyone was looking forward to the next and final lesson in this series.