Colourful melodies

Making and organising sounds to compose a simple musical composition

Teacher music resource developed by The Arts Unit

Years 1 to 6 music

This resource explores making and organising sounds to compose a simple musical composition. Through making a rainbow water xylophone, students will learn how sound waves travel and how different pitches are produced.

Your students will:

• discover how a water xylophone works

• create their own rainbow water xylophone

• experiment with making and organising musical sounds

• compose their own musical piece.

This resource can be linked to other lessons in the Colour my world series including visual arts.

Parent/caregiver support is needed to assist students with the lesson.

Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus

• MUS1.2: explores, creates, selects and organises sound in simple structures.

• MUS2.2: improvises musical phrases, organises sounds and explains reasons for choices.

• MUS3.2: improvises, experiments, selects, combines and orders sound using musical concepts.

Collection of student work

• Google Form: create a Google form with activities and/or questions. Students can also upload any files they create. Email this form to your students with the Creative Class link and all your student responses will be combined in a Google sheet.

• Google Classroom Assignment: create an assignment or a quiz in your Google Classroom with activities and/or questions. Students can also upload any files they create.

• MS Teams: create a quiz or assignment in your class team drive where students can submit responses and upload any files they create.

• Email: ask your students to email you any responses and files they create.

• Flipgrid: a website that allows teachers to create 'grids' to facilitate video discussions. Each grid is a message board where teachers can pose questions called 'topics'. Students can post video responses that appear in a tiled grid display.

• Jamboard: an interactive whiteboard which can be used for class feedback.

For further support on how to create these resources

• Get started with Google Forms

• Create a Google Classroom Assignment

• Assign quizzes to students through Microsoft Teams

• Create an assignment in Microsoft Teams

• Educators – getting started with Flipgrid

• Get started with Jamboard