The Cup Song

by JACOPO CACCO
    School sections
    • Lower secondary school
    Educational subjects
    • Choir
    • Instrumental practice
    • Music, Rhythm and movement
    • Theatre/music

The Cup Song

This educational project was born to interest students in playing an instrument and to stimulate their abilities in creating and re-elaborating starting from a musical genre they know well. For this activity, a famous pop song entitled “When Im Gone”, sung by Anna Kendrick, and more commonly known as “The Cup Song”, was used. 
 
Coloured rigid plastic tumblers were handed out to all the students and strategies were found to teach all the movements necessary to play the basic rhythm. After that, the students were encouraged to look for rhythmic variations by exploiting the potentialities of their own instrument. At the same time, the melody of the song was learned on recorder and/or using the voice. At the end of the project, the melody and rhythm were put together to create a final show or a re-elaboration of the original video clip. 

Work tools

  • IWB or projector. 
  • Coloured rigid plastic tumblers. 
  • Recorder or other melody instrument. 
  • Other percussion instruments for accompaniment, if need be. 
  • Learning environment large enough to work in groups without disturbing one another. 

Educational purposes

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

Competences
    Listening
    • Interpretation
    Production
    • Execution
    • Composition
    Reading and Writing
    • Use of conventional analogic music notation
GOALS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPETENCES [...]
    Lower secondary school
    Listening
    • Understands and evaluates events, materials, and musical works recognising their meanings, also in relation to his/her own musical experience and the different historical/sociological context.
    Production
    • Actively participating in music experiences through the execution and the interpretation of vocal and instrumental music pieces belonging to different genres and cultures.
    Reading and Writing
    • Using different notation systems functional to reading, analysis and reproduction of pieces of music
Educational targets

The students:  

  • Correctly perform vocal and instrumental pieces of music of different genres and styles, both collectively and individually. 
  • Use different notation systems for reading, analysing and producing music pieces. 
  • Memorize and reproduce rhythmic data. 
  • Perform rhythmic sequences using instruments or body percussion. 
  • Perform in a group following a backing track or score, or by ear. 
  • Invent and produce rhythmic sequences with the body or an instrument. 

Community

Commenti inseriti
Slide "The Cup Song "
Presentazione della buona pratica Download
Link utili
Cup Song Tutorial - Video YouTube in inglese Click here
Materiali finalizzati all'azione didattica
Cup Song Tutorial Melodia Flauto Dolce Download