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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 5: Battle of the bands

The topic culminates in a Battle of the Bands which sees pupils playing their music live and adapting their code as they perform.

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Learning objective

To program music for a specific purpose.

Success criteria

I can combine known commands.
I can code music

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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:

Improvise

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Before the lesson

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Lesson plan

Recap and recall

Arrange the children into pairs and display the Presentation: Explain the answer. ‘Live loops have to have a different name, e.g. rhythm and beat. They also have to have a ‘sleep’ at the end of every live loop.’ Ask the children to discuss this with their partner.

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Adaptive teaching

Pupils needing extra support

Should take the example live loop included here and change the numbers/synths accordingly.

Pupils working at greater depth

Should experiment with code and change it whilst it is playing; should use multiple workspaces or ‘Buffers’ to test out different sections of code to add.

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Assessing progress and understanding

Pupils with secure understanding indicated by: coding a piece of music that

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Vocabulary definitions

buffer

When a computer buffers information or buffers, it stores it in its memory while dealing with it.
live code

Seeing a program work as it is built.

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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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