ICT at key stages 1 and 2    (Year 3)

• Create a set of musical cards which have pictures of various instruments whose sounds are represented on an electric keyboard.
• Introduce children to the sounds and encourage them to listen carefully to the quality of sounds (timbre) and describe them using a musical and expressive vocabulary.
• Ask children to take it in turns to select and play the musical sounds they have chosen on the keyboard.

• Discuss families of instruments, such as strings, wind and percussion. Demonstrate sounds and features of these instruments using classroom instruments and a CD-ROM.
• Give children the opportunity to search the CD-ROM for themselves. Ask them to find an example of an instrument from each family and to write its name and family on a card. Then ask them to use a tape recorder to record a sound sample and to sketch an instrument. Ask the class to make a display which includes an invitation to listen to instrument families on cassette.

• Demonstrate a piece of music software in which an icon represents a musical phrase. The class discuss which pictures have musical phrases that sound happy/sad, fast/slow, or sound like the beginning/middle/end.
• Together the class choose four pictures and create a musical sequence. They suggest lyrics to fit in with the melody.
• After rehearsal the children perform and record the class song.

• Work with the class to create a longer musical composition using the same software to create 'a loop' (repeating a complete section of music as many times as required). Ask groups of children to take turns to improvise percussion parts.
• Ask the class to identify the rhythmic pattern which can be repeated and to devise a percussive accompaniment. They record their ideas using symbols and record their performance using a tape recorder.
• Discuss with the children some of the differences between the live and computer-controlled aspects of the composition.

• Tell the class that they are going to experiment with music software and create simple melodies.
• Divide the class into groups and encourage the groups to think about creating a mood in their compositions by selecting appropriate sounds and phrases. Ask them to think about the structure of their compositions, by using a simple pattern such as AABA. Ask them to save their compositions and present them to the rest of the class.