A Fleeing Fairy

Don’t harm, charm – A fairy tale in music

by CARMELINA SORACE
    School sections
    • Pre-primary
    • Primary
    Educational subjects
    • Choir
    • Music, Rhythm and movement
    • Aural skills (Ear training)
    • Composition
    • soundscapes
    • Vocalism

A Fleeing Fairy

This proposal originated from the desire to develop critical thinking in the students on the difference between an innocent and fun joke, and an offence that demeans and causes damage. Therefore: Don’t harm, charm.

The thread running through the path was a brief fairy tale and the creation of its soundtrack through the use of the voice and body.

After the reading of the text, the students were asked to draw a portrait of the fairy, the protagonist of the story: some students portrayed her as a nice fairy, others as spiteful. The sharing of the drawings stimulated a debate, and the fairy’s actions were useful to guide the students in sharing their experiences both in their everyday lives and in class.

In order to create sonorous environments capable of commenting and emphasizing the reading of the text, the students were proposed games, listening activities and production activities aimed to help them develop:
- the use of the spoken voice modulating it on the basis of sound parameters
- the conscious use of their bodies through movement and sonorous gestures
- the use of their well-tuned voices, performing simple one-part and two-part songs all together.

Work tools

The activities were conducted in the classroom e in the gym so as to enable the students to move freely and safely, always during school-hours and on a weekly basis. There were no great difficulties as to the organization and realization of the path, since it mainly required the use of the voice and body. The students realized drawings on the computer through the program Tux Paint, but they also used paper and colored pencils. All the students responded positively participating actively and with curiosity in the experiences proposed enhancing them with their lively and inventive contributions. The experiences were drawn from the book "Giocando nasce il coro" by Carmelina Sorace, edited by Edizioni Milligraf.

Educational purposes

The skills, goals and training objectives selected by the teacher for this experience are shown below.

Competences
    Listening
    • Sound perception
    • Interpretation
    • Analysis
    • Comprehension
    Production
    • Execution
    • Improvisation
    • Composition
    Reading and Writing
    • Use of unconventional analogic music notation
    • Use of conventional analogic music notation
GOALS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPETENCES [...]
    Primary
    Listening
    • Learning to listen to oneself and to the others
    • Identify the constitutive elements of a simple piece of music
    • Listening, interpreting and describing pieces of music of different genres
    • Exploring, identifying and elaborating sound phenomena on the basis of quality, space and source
    Production
    • Exploring different expressive capacities of voice, musical objects and musical instruments
    • Producing timbre, melodic and rhythmic combinations applying basic schemes; executing them with the voice, the body and instruments (including IT tools).
    • Improvising freely and creatively gradually learning to master techniques and materials
    • Playing, alone or in group, simple vocal or instrumental pieces of music belonging to different genres and cultures, using also didactic instruments and self-made tools.
    Reading and Writing
    • Using analog and codified notation
    Pre-primary
    Myself and the others - Production
    • They can manage their first generalizations of the past, present and future and they are more and more independent in the space that is familiar to them, by progressively changing their voices and movements with respect to other children and in accordance with shared rules.
    Body and movement - Production
    • They can control their gestures; they can correctly evaluate risks and interact with other children with movement games, music, dancing, and other forms of expressive communication.
    • They are aware of their body and its different parts and they can represent it statically or dynamically
    Body and movement - Reading and Writing
    • He/she recognises signals and rhythms of his/her body
    Images, sounds, colours - Listening
    • They discover the space of sound through musical perception and production by using their voice, their body as well as various objects.
    Images, sounds, colours - Production
    • The child communicates, expresses emotions and tells, using the various possibilities that the body language allows.
    • He/she invents stories and knows how to express them through dramatization, drawing, painting and other manipulative activities; he/she uses materials and tools, expressive and creative techniques; explores the potential offered by technologies.
    • He/she experiments and combines basic musical elements, producing simple sound and music sequences
    Images, sounds, colours - Reading and Writing
    • He/she explores the first music alphabets using symbols of an informal notation to codify perceived sounds and reproduce them
    Words and speeches - Listening
    • He/she listens and understands stories
    • looks for analogies and similarities between sounds and meanings
    Words and speeches - Production
    • They recognise and experience language plurality
    • They can express and communicate their emotions, feelings and opinions by using verbal language in different situations of communication.
    • They can experiment with nursery rhymes and drama; they invent new words
    Words and speeches - Reading and Writing
    • communication through writing, also experiencing digital technology and new media
    World’s knowledge - Listening
    • They are able to identify objects and people’s positions in space, by using terms such as “in front of/ behind”; “over/under”; “right/left”, etc.
    World’s knowledge - Production
    • he/she follows correctly a path based on verbal indications
Educational targets

The students learned how to:
- listen in an active and conscious way.
- recognize the distinctive characteristics of sounds.
- use their body and voice to produce sounds and body percussion with distinctive parameters.
- move in the space in a coordinated way.
- move in the space responding to musical signs.
- express themselves individually and in group with their voice.
- plan and realize sonorous events through personal improvisation or participating in collective formulation processes.
- perform simple songs all together.
- use traditional notation.
- sing by reading.

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