Blog Reflection: 11.10.17 Trying to create flexibility yet specific steps is a little difficult in getting the right balance to provide students the opportunity to be creative, but also to get them started. Also to give flexibility and differentiation as to students who read music, who prefer to tinker on their guitar, or use notation software as their compositional tools. I'm hoping that this is clear enough in my scaffolding. Before the students even begin to compose their own pieces, I've built into the resource an opportunity to hear other minimalist composers to give them a demonstration of the characteristics and other composers of the style. I've also included an opportunity to play the arrangement of Philip Glass' Closing as previously mentioned.

Utilising text books such as Barbara Freeman’s Teaching through composition and Jim Coyle’s progress maps has given me ideas on how to scaffold small tasks to add up to the bigger composition picture. For example, using given rhythms to create ostinato ideas, even limiting pitch settings to the A minor pentatonic scale. I have taken advantage of the Sibelius worksheet function to help with some of these tasks. These are provided in Sibelius format, pdf and midi so that students can work with which technology or notation method (including pen and paper or aural learning) they wish. This was another reason for choosing my method of resource display to ensure everything could work on or offline.

The Sibelius worksheet function also allowed me to generate different levels of rhythm examples for instance, allowing to choose from simple to more complex. It also generates quite a few so that if students want to go back and complete more for more ideas they are available. Sibelius also allows to create videos, mp3 and midi files all so easily.