Smith Middle School is in Troy, a northern suburb of Detroit. Michigan. Our school has approximately 650 students and is incredibly multi-cultural. The district is well-regarded for its academic excellence and has received recognition for the past 3 years as one of the Top 100 Districts For Music Education in the nation.

CREATIVE EXPRESSIONS

The class the 6th graders take is called "Creative Expressions." It's a new district-wide 6th grade class this year that the art and music teachers were asked to teach to replace the individual music and art exploratory classes for students who are not in the band or orchestra. The concept is to provide students creative thinking opportunities through the arts. We are still in the process of creating and piloting the new curriculum. Even though it is a challenge for some, I think most students are enjoying the design related projects such as the homemade instruments. Along with the website submission project, students did an oral presentation of their instruments for the class. They also improvised and recorded short group compositions in ABA form and did another full class improvisation activity that explored combinations and layering of rhythm patterns.

Now they are on to creating original board games, with written rules and strategies, board designs, clay modeled tokens/board pieces as well as their own question or skill cards if applicable. This will lead to a final unit on inventions which won't really need to work, but they will need to develop a "pitch" to present them to the CEO (me!) and write little jingles to advertise them. That way I'll be able to get a little songwriting in too!

 

MAKING AN INSTRUMENT PROJECT

As far as the instrument assignment goes, I've done this project for many years with my former exploratory music classes and it has always been a success. I provide the students with a packet containing some sample instruments and directions. I also display instruments that former students have donated to my "sample box" to give them some some visual tips and ideas. And this year I also gave them a list of websites such as this one to check out, too. The students made their instruments for homework with materials they had at home....some spent more time on their project than others. Their rubric for grading was to build an instrument that

• "looks good" (decorated/finished)
• "sounds good" ((clarity/volume/variety/pitch)
• "stays together" (strength/assembly design)

More complex string and pitched instruments were rewarded with higher grades.