Stream 3 Music Composition: Adventuresome Characters

 Overview: 
Louise, the Adventures of a Chicken is a delightful children's picture book by Kate DiCamillo and Harry Bliss (HarperCollins, 2008).  The story focuses on Louise as she seeks excitement and adventure by traveling to three exotic locales.  In each chapter of her chronicled adventures, Louise encounters challenging situations and robust characters that frame moments of self-discovery and eventually draw Louise back home to the farm. 

As a chicken in four vivid settings, Louise is a character clearly in need of a theme to ground her.  This lesson begins with the whole class composing just such a theme for Louise.  Students then work in small groups to situate this theme in one of the four settings (pirate ship, circus, bazaar, or farm) explored in the book.  

This project may be approached as a: 

• teacher-facilitated whole class composition for the current season. This will allow the lesson to be used four times a year
• small-group composition with each small group creating its own version of the current season.  This will allow the lesson to be used four times each year. 
• small-group composition with each small group adopting a different season.  This format would likely be used just once in a year.  It could also be done in fall and gain in late spring to see how the composers have grown over the course of the year. 

The whole group configurations is most appropriate for students who have little to no previous experience with songwriting.  For students who have engaged in whole class songwriting in grades K-2, small group composition can be very successful. 

Materials: 

• A Sketchpage for each group
• Pitched and unpitched classroom instruments
• One copy of DiCamillo's Louise, the Adventures of a Chicken (Note: It is helpful to give each group a copy of the story book, but a single copy can be shared). 
• Invented, transitional, or traditional notation paper may be copied on the "B-side" of Sketchpage or made available for students to select as needed

Project Time: 
This lesson will fully occupy a 45-minute class period. 

Discussion Questions to Develop Compositional Capacities:
Feallingful Intention-What is the overall feeling that suits an adventuresome chicken?  How does that feeling change when Louise is in a specific setting? 
Music Expressivity: Which of the M.U.S.T.S. is most useful in altering the theme to fit the particular settings iwthin the story?  Are any of the M.U.S.T.S. more prominent than others in maintaining the feeling of "adventure"?  Why or why not? 
Artistic Craftsmanship--What compositional techniques did each group use to vary the theme?  How did the technique help the listener understand what it was like to be Louise in a particular part of the story? 

Procedure: 

• You may want to open the lesson with a listening extension. 
  • Winter Wonderland, by Felix Bernar 
• Working Together as a Whole Class: 
• Small-Group Work
  • Ask the students if they know any cartoon characters with their own special music.  Ask students to describe the character and how their music sounds.  For example, Superman's music is heroic and the music begins with a big leap as he takes to the sky.  
  • Once you have a few examples, introduce the term "theme" and explain how a theme describes a character with sounds instead of words. 
  • Introduce the idea of composing music to enhance the telling of a story.  Have students listen as you read the story.  Encourage them to think about words they would use to describe Louise. 
  • Write the students' descriptive words on the board.  To extend the development of intentional capacity, ask the students if the descriptions they offered apply to Louise throughout the whole story or in some parts of the story more than others.  Circle the "whole story" answers and note where other words applied (pirate ship, circus, bazaar, or farm). 
  • Working as a whole class, create Louise's theme.  Ask the students to think about the list of descriptive words and sounds they have generated.  Invite the students to close their eyes and imagine Louise's theme.  
  • Ask the students to perform their ideas.  The class should echo each idea so that every student internalizes how the music feels.  Name these ideas on the board as the "skipping" idea, the "hero" idea, etc. 
  • Once all ideas are posted, have the class discuss the strengths of each idea and consider minor adjustments, mergers, and revisions.  Generally one or two ideas will emerge as class favorites.  If necessary, vote to select the strongest idea, emphasizing that there were many good ideas, but that just one is needed for this particular project.  
  • Sing the chosen Louise's theme several times to that everyone knows it well. 
  • Discuss the term "variation."  Ask students to offer ideas about things that can change in a piece of music (rhythm, pitch, dynamics, instruments, tempo, etc.)  Place answers on the board so that students can refer to this list as they work. 
• Small-Group Work
  • ​Divide the class into small groups and assign each group a section of the story (pirate ship, circus, bazaar, or farm).  Ask each group to create a list of descriptive words that apply to Louise in the their assigned setting.  Give the students 2-3 minutes to work.  Remind them to add these words to their Feelingful Intention space on their Sketchpages. 
  • Ask the students to match sounds to their descriptive words.  Prompt questions might include these: 
    • ​What does the theme sound like when Louise is on the pirate ship during rough seas?
    • ​What might the theme sound like when Louise teeters on the high wire? 
    • How might the theme change when Louise is captured and caged with other chickens? 
    • What does the theme sound like when Louise finally settles back on the farm? 
    • Once this is done, encourage the students to select on M.U.S.T.S. area that seems to fit their part of the story and at least two variation techniques that they can apply to create the variations on Louie's theme.  Encourage students to note these ideas on their Sketchpages. 
    • Invite students to collect whatever instruments and other tools they need to complete their work.
    • Allow 10 minutes of work time.  Remember, it is easy to grant an extra 2 or 3 minutes of work time, but difficult to take it away. 
• ​Putting It All Together ​
  • ​Performance and Refinement: Discuss the performance order with the students.  It is easy to create an introduction by having all the students perform the original version of the Louie's theme.  As it concludes, the music for the pirate part of the story should begin.  The composers of the pirate and circus sections should quickly discuss when the music of the circus part should begin.  Similar conversations are needed between "circus and bazaar" and "bazaar and arm" composing teams. 
  • Student Reflection: After the initial performance, discuss how each variation worked.  What was interesting about the music of each section?  What techniques did the composers use to capture the essence of the adventure in their part of the story?  Which of the M.U.S.T.S. was most useful? 
  • Opportunity for Revision: Give the students one minute to discuss with their team how they might make their section of the music work better.  Perform again.  Ask students to identify the changes they made and how they think the change impacted the music. 
  • Record the entire class performance with narration. 
  
  
  • Sketchpages:

Composing for Adventuresome Characters-BW
Composing for Adventuresome Characters-Color 
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