Averages: Mean, Median and Mode

We recently gave the students a short diagnostic at the beginning of term so we could determine what areas of Maths we needed to pinpoint before the end of the year. One of indicated areas of weakness was Mean, Median and Mode often covered in the dimension of Measurement Chance and Data. So I set myself a task of designing a lesson that integrated ICT and working with averages.

I have quite a few kinesthetic learners in my grade 4 class and I really wanted to engage these students right from the beginning. Therefore the first part of the lesson the students need to collect some data that related to their physical selves. These included simple measurements like the length of the their arm, height, how far they can jump from a stand still, how long it takes to do one lap of the basketball court, how long it takes to say the alphabet. Not only was this a great way to get the students to move around the classroom and school but it also integrated some measurement as well. With great enthusiasm they had collected their data in next to no time. Download “What Measurements You Need To Find” Work sheet.

Once they had collected the measurements they were then required to jump online and input their data in the Google form. I love google docs! We have just started to explore them as a school when we migrated our entire student email system over to the Google Apps Education package. Google Forms is one of the document types you can choose from. It is a brilliant tool that lets you customise your form in many ways. You add the questions or the desired content with help information for each question if needed. Google Forms allows for a range of question types for example: standard text or paragraph question, multiple choice, check boxes, choose from list, grid and scale. When your content has been added  then you’re able to choose from a range of templates to suit your taste.

Types Of Documents

Once the Form is created there are a number of options to share and promote it. Emailing it out can be very effective. In fact  you receive the form inside the email and the data can be submitted without having to go to the web. Secondly, you can host or post the link out which will take you to the live form. Thirdly, Google Forms allows you to embed the form into a web page or blog. This could be really effective if you have a class blog ,all you would need to do is grab the HTML code and embed it into a post or page and direct your students to it. For this lesson I chose to host the link on our intranet which then took the students to the live form.  

What happens next is one of the most intuitive aspects of google docs. Once the students have submitted their data via the form it then goes to a spreadsheet. Having the live spreadsheet up on the IWB watching the data submitted live was incredibly effective. The students were already starting to analyse the data as it was coming into view. Generally most were comparing their times around the basketball court . The spreadsheet can then be shared with who ever you want. Saved as a PDF , shared as a link on the intranet, emailed as a link to a live web page or kept private. Google spreadsheets doesn’t have  many of the features that Excel offers but its the ability to view and share it on the web that makes it a really powerful tool. I have Shared the Spreadsheet here. Please make a copy of it.

Finally, the students were given calculators and after a discussion/refresher on Mean, Median and Mode were then challenged to analysis the data and present their findings. Each pair was given a print out of the google spreadsheet and using the old fashioned book, pencil and ruler drew up tables to assist in their presentations.

This was a fantastic unit one of my favourites for 2009. Our grade 4 students enjoyed it too. The ICT skills needed to complete these were extensive. At least four different pieces of software were used. Safari (HeroFactory), Comiclife, iphoto, Garageband, and iTunes. The students had used all before but not to the extent as they had for this unit. This post is going to be a step by step outline of how they put them together.

Axe Women 2, The Evil Karate Ninja Returns, Fierce and Metallic, Zoo Trouble

Step 1 Create the Characters

I had used Herofactory before with the students and witnessed how engaged they were when designing their heroes. The ease with which they were able to create their heroes meant that all abilities were catered for. Each student had to then write a short description about their hero. Some students wanted to dive straight in and write a story about their hero which sparked the initial idea for creating comics. Quite a few of the boys and girls in my class love reading comics and I knew that a literacy activity embedded with ICT would be the perfect tool for continuing their engagement in our class literacy program.

The students were given a simple yet effective task of creating several characters that were either good or evil. We had discussions of similar situations where stories were created on this premise. For example, the Harry Potter series, Star Wars and various other super hero cartoons and comics. Emphasised were side kicks and henchmen and their stereotypical characteristics.

Once the students had created their characters and downloaded into their downloads folder they then had to copy and paste them into a shared folder on our network.

Step 2 Plan Narrative For Comic

The students were given a simple narrative template outlining the Setting, Main Characters, Orientation (When, Where, What situation, why,) Complication, Series of events and Resolution. Plan For A Narrative (http://docs.google.com/View?id=dccs9mv7_220ctzbfgg4). They then filled this out using dot points which provided them with some guidance and structure. If I had more time I would have used an online mind mapping tool like bubbl.us (Other mindmapping tools) to plan their narrative.

Step 3 Importing into iphoto and start cropping.

Because the students are working with static images they really had to think about how they are going to manipulate the images to infer movement and change. By importing all their characters that they made in HeroFactory into iphoto (drag and drop over the icon or use the import function) they were able to select and crop various parts of the images to emphasis particular objects and body movement. For example by selecting and and cropping a super hero weapon and there by emphasising it the students were able to infer that the hero was using it. It is essential that the students keep a original copy of their characters somewhere safe or duplicate in iphoto every time they changed the image allowing for multiple transformations.

Step 4 Discuss Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is essential in writing comics. Especially Superhero comics. See Batman Opening Sequence. I found one of the Learning Federation Objects or Digital Learning Resources on creating Manga very useful. With this Digilearn activity the student plays the role of a new employee in a manga design studio. They explore elements of manga comics such as story lines, characters, colours, text bubbles and onomatopoeia. They have the opportunity to complete a story about a car crash. Choose dialogue and onomatopoeic words to fit pictures. For example, choose words to match the sound of car tyres stopping suddenly. Here is the link  https://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/dlr/_layouts/dlr/Details.aspx?ID=4485 Victorian teacher only need to type their Edumail user-name and password to view.

Step 5 Using Comic life to build their comics.

‘Comic life’ is a wonderful piece of software. Its so powerful and versatile. It should be mandatory on every schools list of software. Now that the students had their plan and cropped images ready, all they had to do was drag them into their  ’Comic life’ template chose the appropriate speech bubbles, text and supporting onomatopoeia . Some of the students became really creative adding their own images giving extra meaning to their stories. I was really impressed with how much detail the students put into their comics. Watching how easily the students navigated around the software I too learnt a great deal about some of the functions that ‘Comic life’ has to offer.

Step 6 Export Comic As A Movie

When there comics have finished and sufficiently finessed the students the had to export their comic as a Quicktime Movie creating a slide show of the comic pages. Its important that the students think about how long they want each slide to appear so the reader has time to digest all that is on the page. This may take a few exports to get the timing right. They might want to ask some of their friends to read them after they have exported because they will read it through as if they hadn’t read it before. We found that around 15-20 seconds per slide was enough. Its also important that their comics pages are exported as full quality jpeg’s.

Step 7 Import Comic Slide Show Into Garageband And Compose Music

Garageband is one of the most used programs at North Fitzroy Primary School. As with all the iLife applications it integrates so well and each application is able to talk to the other. Importing your slideshow is so easy, a couple of clicks! Here is a screen cast.
Download. Once the comic movie has been imported the students click back into loops and start composing their piece of music to suit their comic. Some students included sound effects to enhance the onomatopoeia. Possible extension ideas for advanced musicians: [1] Plug in a midi keyboard and use the software instruments (midi sounds) to compose music. [2] Compose thematic musical ideas for characters in the comic. [3] Use the in built notator to compose a score. [4] Use other notation software for example Sebalius to compose score. Then record using live musicians or play into Garageband using midi keyboard.

Step 8 Export as a Full Quicktime Movie

The final step in the process is to share the finished product as a full quality quicktime movie. This is done through the Share function within Garageband. Here are a couple of screen shots to demonstrate.  We found that when they had finished exporting, that each movie file only came to about 9 to 16 megabytes. Perfect for posting into a blog. You can see some finished examples of student work here.

Export a full quality Quicktime Movie

Export as Full Quicktime Movie 2

As read!

You can see the directory here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t_eXnsZbhqyAzSa4Zh6f_7w&output=html

This was a task set as part of our integrated topic that linked in with our English planner. Our Integrated topic titled ‘Testing The Waters’ Level 3 (grade 3&4) Term 2 2009 Integrated Planner, English Planner Term 2 2009. A Science topic that looked at living and non-living things in a particular ocean habitat. Having six classes in grades 3 and 4 worked to our advantage because we were able to allocate a particular ocean habitat to each class. The main written task was for students to research and produce an information report on an animal that lives in a particular habitat. After an amazing excursion to Ricketts Point (see student blog posts by Jaso and Cemie Girl and Kirubiru), the students couldn’t wait to ’sink their teeth into some solid research on their sea animals and habitats. Their enthusiasm paid off and some amazing information reports and posters were produced.

The next phase of the Rich Task was for the students to create a Podcast in the style of a short (1 to 2 minutes) news report using the information from their report. First we had to tune in, literally. The best examples of podcast news reports was on the ABC website. I chose the ABC’s news program ‘AM’ and ‘PM’ because they had all the elements that I wanted to model. For example: Intro and Outro music, Main Headlines, Sub headlines, Tone of voice to suit the nature of a news report, back ground music to create and maintain interest and a conclusion or closing remarks.

Garageband was going to be our main tool. The wonderful thing about using this piece of software is that with only a few clicks the students have access to a podcast template. See images below.

This makes life so much easier when trying to model for students. The Main Tracks are already in place and  rather than having to create complete sound tracks to and back ground together, Garageband has complete jingles ready to click, drag and dump into the work space. Using one of the finished student information reports we put together a quick whole class news report. We worked on timing and tone of voice. The students were really motivated by how easy it was to choose the music and then record the voice over the top. When in Podcast mode Garageband automatically fades the Jingle track so that it doesn’t over power the voice. Brilliant! You may need to clip some of the over hang of the recorded voice to get the true effect of the music fading in and out with the news reader.

The next step was for the students to plan their news report. Each pair were given a template (Podcast Template Main Points) to use as a guide for their plan. This proved to be very useful because once they had written all their information on it they were then able to go and begin to put their draft podcast together. Some students had scripted exactly what they were going to say. Yet some students clearly desired a little freedom to improvise and used dot points or short statements. Either way both proved to be effective.

I was fascinated by the level of engagement as the students were working. Some students had independently moved to another space and were rehearsing their lines, others were just going for it and recording each rehearsal straight into Garageband. I over heard discussions about timing, volume, muting sound, deleting, splicing, looping, tone and saving into the correct folder. There was evidence of interpersonal development as the students had to negotiate what role each was going to play, which loop, who was going to press record. I was witnessing the awe and wonderment of these students using technology and they were clearly impressed with what they had achieved.

I set up a little recording studio in the back store room for the final cut recording. It’s amazing what a couple pairs of head phones hooked up to a laptop hanging on a music stand can do to create a little authenticity. I chose not to use a mic because I didn’t want to complicate matters with a sound box. I really wanted to students to be independent and do all the recording themselves. All that was needed was the mic on the mac. We were now really pushed for time and as each group went in I gave them strict instructions that if they couldn’t nail it in a couple of takes that they were to leave the studio to return later after further rehearsal. The other pairs continued to rehearse their parts and tweak their drafts as each pair took their turn.

The plenary at the end of the day was awesome! They loved listening to each others podcast. Using an IWB to display their Garageband projects as they were listening was really useful so that they could see how others had constructed their podcast. Each podcast was received with a round of applause and loads of positive affirmations.

I hope you enjoy listening to some of them as I have facilitating their production. Some have already begun to post them up on their class blog at 4A’s Bloggerama. Below are some examples.

1, Garibaldi News 2, Diving With Tigers 3, Sea Urchin News

4,S.I.J On CRN News 5,The Coral Podcast 6,Nat and Neve’s Tropical News

After many end of term/semester interruptions we managed to get our student compositions back on track and record them on video. Kynan Robinson and myself embarked on a student composition unit at the beginning of term 2 with all grade 5 and 6 students. We began the unit by focusing on whole class ensemble performance and composition using the contrasting nature of consonance and dissonance as stimulus. As  read and heard in previous posts Dissonance and Consonance, Moving Towards Dissonance, and Diabolical, the students composed some fabulous and interesting melodic ideas.

The second phase of the whole class modeling process was to emphasis the role that each part of the large ensemble played. At North Fitzroy Primary School we are extremely fortunate to be able to run an Ensemble Program during timetabled allotted time. It’s considered to be part of the Extend Your Talents program and students who show a aptitude for music are invited to join. There are 4 ensembles 3, 4, 5, and 6. A lot of the music they learn and perform is written in 4 part ostinatos. Best described as Bass, two harmony parts and main melody and at times we also have untuned percussion. Kynan and I believe that along with starting student composition from an early age, couple this with the ensemble program, our students are completely comfortable with the roles of bass, harmony and melody.

After the whole class modeling process had finished the students were split into small  groups no larger the 5. Each group was required to compose a short ostinato based piece that had an A section and a B section (Originally it was planned that a C section would be included but lack of time prevented this from happening). They needed to be mindful of the role of the Bass: Support the harmony and melody rhythmically and ground the piece by maintaining the pulse. Harmony: support and emphasis the main melody but not dominate. Melody: To be the main tune that captured the characteristics of the composition. They could use the concepts of Consonance and Dissonance to contrast the A and B sections but weren’t restricted to this. Untunded percussion could also be included.

I am extremely happy with what has been created considering that each piece was composed over a two one hour session. Clearly had there been more time each piece would have benefited from some finessing. For example; Ending, dynamics and extended rehearsal time for some groups.

Each performance was recorded on three flip cameras and the footage was edited in Final Cut Express. This presented a whole variety of issues which I will dedicate entirely to a separate post.

5J’s 3rd Movement Diabolical

5J’s 2nd Movement Towards Dissonance

5J’s 1st Movement of Haunted House Music Consonant

This is the Third installment of 5J’s “Haunted House Music”. The previous two posts discussed Consonance and Dissonance as a compositional tool for students to use to scaffold their musical ideas. As a class we decided that three movements were required. 1st movement needed to sound consonant, 2nd movement was titled ‘Moving Towards Disonance’ (building the tension) and the 3rd we named Diabolical. After rehearsing through the first two movements the students were given only 5minutes to transform their ostinati into the diabolical centering around the clash of dissonant intervals. Again we discussed how this could be achieved using such diatonic Orf instruments and some of the students opted to substitute their F and B notes for sharps and flats. We also discussed how the rhythm could be changed to suit the tension of the diabolical movement.

Once the 5 minutes was up all new ideas were performed and written on the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB). Further discussion took place and small changes were made so that the 5 new ostinati would lock together. Then Rehearsed, Recorded and Reviewed.

Their next task is to pull it altogether. How shall they arrange it so that their is smooth transition between each movement? Is it necessary for smooth transition? How is it going to finish?

5J Towards Dissonance

5J Part A of Haunted House Music Consonant

This is the second installment of the grade 5 and 6 composition unit mentioned in previous post Dissonance and Consonance.

“I’m a big believer in getting children to compose from a very early age, in that way the mystique is taken away from the role of composer and it becomes a natural and enjoyable activity for kids to participate in.” Kynan Robinson (musician, composer and music educator)

This lesson focused on how we could shift the consonant movement of our haunted house music toward the dissonant movement. The students decided that we needed to gradual shift and that a second movement was necessary to build the tension.

Playing on Orff instruments has its limitations because most of them are not chromatic. We discussed the various dissonant possibilities of the C major Orff instruments, Shifting their ostinato up a tone, using B and C, E and F because they are a semitone apart, introducing the auxiliary keys Bflat and F#. After playing through the first movement (consonant) the students were given a few minutes to manipulate their simple melodic ostinati. As you can hear some wonderful ideas were created. I enjoyed the fact that they generally maintained  the characteristics of each ostinato an changing just one or two notes.

Its great to be starting our composition unit with grades 5 and 6 this term. Kynan Robinson and I love teaching this unit because its a great opportunity to see and hear student creativity. It’s also exciting to see the reaction of the students when they compose a successful piece of music especially when it’s a collaboration with other students in small and or large groups.

We have decided to begin the unit with looking at consonance and dissonance. Which lends itself to using a picture of a “Haunted House” as stimulus. Discussion ensued regarding what makes a successful scary story and one that has a haunted house in it. Build up, series of events, climax and resolution  We also discussed what are some of the sounds or imagery that needed to be included in our composition.  See Picture

When designing this unit, Kynan and I wanted the students to develop an understanding of consonance and dissonance to facilitate their abilities to create tension and release. The best way of doing this was to play them two pieces of music that use consonance and dissonance to the extreme. The first being Erik Satie’s – Gymnopédie No.1
a great example of consonance composition with mild dissonances. Its best described as background music or furniture music. For the second piece we wanted and example that was very dissonant and the great example of this is Krysztof Penderecki’s ‘Threnode to the Victums of Hiroshima’. I love watching the students reaction to the opening bars of this piece. The use of tone clusters and glissandi are very effective in getting the point across. After a quick demonstration on how tone clusters are constructed and juxtaposing this against a simple C major chord the students were reading to start our first whole class composition.

Traditionally we have always started with student sound scape but this time we decided to launch straight into melodic and rhythmic ostinati. Using Orff melodic instruments only and as a whole class our first task was to compose a very consonant piece using melodic ostinato. This is to contrast and slowly build to the ’scary’ part of the composition. Asking one student from each section to quickly improvise a short melodic ostinato they then had to teach it to the rest of their section. Gradually we put each ostinato together refining the odd note and rhythm so that each melody was able to lock together.

Part A of our whole class composition “Haunted House Music”

5J Part A of Haunted House Music Consonant

This is a music video by 4A A film clip produced by grade 4 students. All lyrics written by 4A students. Backing track recorded and composed by the Grade 4 Ensemble. Filmed (Flip camera) and edited by Andrew (Class/Music Teacher).

This project took about 6 weeks, one hour a week. The first step was to lean a  poem call Cats by Eleanor Fajeon.

Cats sleep anywhere,
any table, any chair.
Top of piano, window-ledge,
in the middle, on the edge.
Open drawer, empty shoe,
anybody’s lap will do.
Fitted in a cardboard box,
in the cupboard with your frocks.
Anywhere! They don’t care!
Cats sleep anywhere.

This is a great poem because it has a steady beat and fantastic rhyming words. Each line fits in to four beats as well which lends itself to performing with any funky beat created in Garageband. It’s important to keep in time with the beat. After analysing the structure of the poem emphasising the rhyming words on the fourth beat of each line we split up into small groups to rehearse and perform the poem.

Second Step: Brain storm various animals and the things that they can do. We then had to write a short two verse poem about our animal with an action.  Each line had to fit into four beats and the last word of each line had to rhyme. Once we finish we rehearsed and then performed with the beat of a drum.

Third Step: Polish our short animal verse and memorise. Standing in a large circle each group had to perform their animal verse one after the other with out missing a beat creating a whole class animal rap. This took a while to get the hang of especially when the funky beat that was created in Garageband was playing in the back ground.

Fourth Step: Record the whole class animal rap into Garageband. Each group was recorded individually with the funky backing track.

Fifth Step: Each group had to choreograph a few simple moves to their verse. They had to rehearse each verse so they could rap and move at the same time. Found a great location just a few blocks away from school and recorded each group on a Flip camera.

Sixth Step: Edit each groups performance in iMovie using the Garageband recording (Step four) as the sound track.

Also posted on 4A’s Bloggerama and Global Student

Flipping out (Recording using a Flip camera) with the Grade 5 Ensemble.