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Subjects

Art and design Computing Design and technology French Geography History Music Physical education Spanish Religion and worldviews RSE & PSHE Science Wellbeing

Lesson 4: Live loops

Building on Lesson 3, the children are introduced to live loops to create a repeating beat or rhythm.

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Content archive >
Computing > Upper key stage 2 > Archived unit: Programming 1: Music: Sonic Pi (laptop and desktop users) > Lesson 4: Live loops

Learning objective

To program a soundtrack.

Success criteria

I can work from a plan.
I can use

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National curriculum

Computing

Pupils should be taught to:

Design,

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Cross-curricular links

Music

Pupils should be taught to:

Play

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Before the lesson

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Lesson plan

Recap and recall

Arrange the children into pairs (a different partner to the last lesson) and hand out the children’s Activity: Soundtrack planning sheets from lesson 3. Ask each child to explain to their partner what their music is going to be like for their scene. The children need to use musical vocabulary.

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Adaptive teaching

Pupils needing extra support

Should continue with the coding commands from last time (no need to add live_loops or samples).

Pupils working at greater depth

Should introduce them to the rrand(a, b) command, which chooses a random number between two parameters: ‘play rrand(60, 70)’; will pick a random note to play between 60 and 70. This means every time a code loops around, it will be a different note played: ‘sleep rrand(0.1, 1)’ – this can also be used for sleep duration.

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Assessing progress and understanding

Pupils with secure understanding indicated by: including a live loop and explaining

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Vocabulary definitions

beat

Regular sound to music.
bugs

A mistake or error in the code, stopping the program from working as intended.

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In this unit

Assessment - Computing Y5: Programming: Music - Sonic Pi

Lesson 1: Tinkering with Sonic Pi

Lesson 2: Sonic soundtracks

Lesson 3: Musical storytelling

Lesson 4: Live loops

Lesson 5: Battle of the bands

Originally created by:

Sway Grantham

Computing specialist

Sway Grantham (@SwayGrantham) is a Primary School Teacher, a CAS Master Teacher and Specialist Leader in Education for Primary ICT. She also has a BCS Certificate in Computer Science Teaching (Primary). She has written several curricula and conducted research into the impact of 1:1…

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