Create a live soundscape to a story

Here’s a fun music activity you can try with your students. It also has great links with literacy. This video features a soundscape to the book “Mr McGee Goes to Sea” by Pamela Allen.

To do the activity, choose a book to read aloud to your students. You might like to read one that links to a topic that students are learning about in class or that reinforces a specific literacy focus, such as use of adjectives.

Using their bodies, tuned or untuned percussion instruments and found sounds (such as items from around the room), students create a live soundscape to bring the story to life.

Music outcomes

F - 2

• Develop aural skills by exploring and imitating sounds, pitch and rhythm patterns using voice, movement and body percussion ACAMUM080
• Sing and play instruments to improvise, practise a repertoire of chants, songs ACAMUM081
• Create compositions and perform music to communicate ideas to an audience ACAMUM082

3 – 4

• Develop aural skills by exploring, imitating and recognising elements of music including dynamics, pitch and rhythm patterns ACAMUM084
• Practise singing, playing instruments and improvising music, using elements of music including rhythm, pitch, dynamics and form in a range of pieces ACAMUM085 
• Create, perform and record compositions by selecting and organising sounds, silence, tempo and volume ACAMUM086 

5 - 6

• Explore dynamics and expression, using aural skills to identify and perform rhythm and pitch patterns ACAMUM088
• Rehearse and perform music including music they have composed by improvising, sourcing and arranging ideas and making decisions to engage an audience ACAMUM090

7 – 8

• Experiment with texture and timbre in sound sources using aural skills ACAMUM092 
• Develop musical ideas, such as mood, by improvising, combining and manipulating the elements of music ACAMUM093​

Links to other learning areas

• Literacy – reading, listening, writing. Depending on the book/theme chosen, there may be links to other Learning Areas. For example, Mr McGee Goes to Sea could link to topics to do with Weather and Water. 
• Drama – students could create a role play to re-enact the narrative or sections from it (this could even be done alongside the performance of the soundscape)

Want more?

Resources like this are provided when booking a Musica Viva In Schools program.

Find out more about Musica Viva In Schools.