Music Stories

Benefits of Listening to Music

Underscores, enhances and intensifies the emotional response to the story

Can enhance memory

Can lead to an improved emotional state

Stimulates and engages many different parts of the brain

Benefits of Spoken Stories

Fundamental part of the human experience

Help develop empathy

Stimulate imagination

Develop memory

Increase vocabulary

Post-Story Discussion

Reinforces the learning in the story

Takes children from passive learning to active learning.

Children learn from each other

Some topics to cover What happened in the story? Reinforces memory. Children help each other remember events

What did characters/landscapes/objects featured in the story look like? Stimulates imagination and visualisation

Replay sections, listen, imagine. Connect Aural cues with visual. Light vs. dark, etc.

What did the characters do? Why? What would you have done? Reinforces empathy – putting self in another’s shoes. Behaviour modelling – what is appropriate behaviour?

Discuss the story world. How is it like/unlike ours? Societal structures/family relationships. Helps children work out how their world works, develops an understanding of what is and isn’t real, nurtures an understanding and acceptance of differences between people and places.

Choose music 10 to 15 minutes long

Contains lots of contrasting sections and moods

No identifiable lyrics

Not limited to western classical tradition

Evokes an emotional response in you, as the story teller

Remember that kids can be sophisticated listeners, given the chance

Listen over and over Note the times of major changes in feel

Note any thoughts/images/actions that come to mind

“If this were a film...”

Everything is right

Start weaving it all together(Magic helps a lot!)

Writing a Story

Points to Consider

Kids are all different Include action sequences for the active learners and short attention spans

Include food where possible

Lots of rich visual description

Describe textures

Include feelings, thoughts, internal reactions

Include frameworks – i.e. societal structures/familial structures/landscapes

It doesn’t have to be a linear storyIt could be a series of tableaux, one extended description of a scene, a series of short stories

It doesn’t have to make a lot of sense Magic is great for explaining random events

The children seem to focus on characters’ actions and interactions rather than the setting and events

Telling the Story

Include actions for the children to copy Gives smaller children a way to engage with the music and the story

Helps ‘doing learners’ understand the events of the story

Keeps high-energy and ‘butterfly’ children engaged

Involves the children in the story and helps move toward active learning

Use lots of gestures

Use exaggerated facial expressions

Match speech speed and cadence to the music

Free play

Introduce musical instruments Children learn where the music comes from

Supports physical development

Supports persistence and self-confidence

Normalises musical instruments

Helps build their understanding of how the physical world works and the principles of sound production

Get the children actively involved Use pieces like Saint-saens’ ‘Carnival of the Animals’ and invite the children to decide the

animals and describe the animal’s environment and actions, or play movements of works like Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ and invite the children to describe the images Active learning

Stimulates imagination

Develops self-confidence

Encourages participation

Focussed listening

Follow on Activities

Follow on Activities

Incorporate dance and movement Read written books, i.e. ‘Bear Hunt’, and for each even play some music and

‘dance’. I.e. walking through the long grass. Use props

Discuss stories and how we tell stories with our bodies, demonstrate a short story with mime, then play short works and ask the children to tell their own stories with mime.

Play ‘Carnival of the Animals’ and ‘be’ the animals