At Ormiston Junior College (OJC), we believe in a transdisciplinary practice, although as Learning Coaches we each have our unique experiences and specialist backgrounds. Coming together to form the JS TAIP as a coaching team in a Transdisciplinary Authentic Inquiry Projects (TAIP) over Terms Three and Four in 2018, we aim to immerse our learners in an integrated environment where crucial 21st Century skills are practised alongside developing knowledge and skills in the creative fields - in curricular speech they are Music, Practical Arts, Dance, Drama, Digital Technology, and Hard Materials Technology.
The following workshop is designed as a series of provocation to connect visual communication and sound association, themed story-telling of the Little Red Riding Hood.
In a nutshell:
- A collection of poster designs of the Little Red Riding Hood here. Prior to this learners has had the experience of storyboarding and visualising the most memorable moments of a story;
- Some examples of CD cover designs here. Most learners do not know what a CD is. There is a sense of novelty (antique) with showing the real thing;
- A simple CD sleeve template can be downloaded here. The square format is easy to learners to relate to.
- Learners typically go through workshops by visual art and music specialists who introduce them to industry practice, namely, working with a brief and in collaboration with other experts in the field.
This video is one of the well-known clips for programme music. Programme Music is descriptive, suggesting visual images or 'telling a story'. The descriptive idea or story-line is known as the programme. Orchestral Programme Music became very popular during the Romantic period (19th century) when music developed close links with literature and painting.
After the video, we discussed as a class how the music helps to imagine the story. Our learners actively shared their noticing and understanding of the video.
Finally, this was the task for the week.
To give more ideas, we had looked into the Apple Music app since it presents covers and brief notes for the music since students are using the app every day and wanted to unpack how musicians present their music these days.
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| [Joo Yeon Lee with learners during the introductory workshop] |
I also presented physical CDs to students to understand how it looks like and to have a better understanding of a given CD template. Surprisingly, it was their first encountered of CDs.
At OJC, each student has a device, iPad. They all received the same template from the Learning Coach for the CD cover and started to implement it using various apps. Few students had difficulties finding 17th-century music. However, they managed to find music that is descriptive to the story. Students have also added a QR code so that people can link to the music. This was highly accessible for visitors when we had the expo night.
Below is a collection of some fantastic work done by our learners in the space of one week.. (and a bit)..
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| [Justin V] |
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| [Kheona, Digital Drawing] |
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| [Toni V, Digital Drawing] |
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| [Aliza K] |
This activity was one of the best ways to introduce integrating arts and music. Learners were able to extend their artistic description to be more articulate and explored various music genres. These works were not only presented at the school expo night also at the Auckland Middle Schools Art Exhibition at Silo Park.
Love it. Do it!
End note by Sylvie:
The above workshop was a collaboration between Sylvie Huang and Joo Yeon Lee, who is a magician musician and one of the best people I have had the pleasure of working with.
