Live Loops Poetry: a GarageBand project for early learners

Here in the US, April is National Poetry Month, a time where educators and learners can celebrate the important place poetry has in our lives. As a former elementary music teacher and tech coach, I saw this month as the perfect time to collaborate with classroom teachers, merging literacy skills with music creation — thus the inspiration for Live Loops Poetry: a GarageBand project for early learners.

Book cover showing a Live Loops template in GarageBand for iPadOS.

The idea is simple, follow poetic forms to create music using GarageBand for iPadOS.

There are four different poetic structures to choose from.

Image showing four different Live Loops GarageBand screens.

Each project teaches foundational GarageBand skills such as downloading additional sounds, editing loop titles, arranging and sharing, while allowing students to learn “the rules” that dictate the poetic form.

To best support all learning styles, the book features:

Step-by-step instructions
Media galleries with callouts
Video demo of a final project

Screen showing instructions and media galleries.

Screen showing video demo of final project.

I’ve always ❤️ learning experiences that provide our students with the ability to see themselves in the project. Now with Live Loops Poetry, our students can hear themselves in the project as well.

Live Loops Poetry is available here on Apple Books.

I can’t wait to hear (and see) what your students create.

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4 replies

April 10, 2023

Perfect timing! Thank you for sharing!

April 10, 2023

Such a great resource with some really innovative and alternative ways to be inspired to create music. Thanks for sharing! I'll be sharing this with my classes, especially pre-service music teachers. 😎

April 10, 2023

Love your book Erika - and the sounds in the demo - so fun! Thanks for reminding us about the music connection learners can make to poetry and providing the GarageBand guide to do so. Perfect for April!

April 11, 2023

Such a wonderful project, Erika! 🤩

I love everything about this book, from the hand-drawn designs and icons, to how it combines poetry and loops to encourage learners to explore music making with GarageBand in such a fun, creative, and personalised way!

Live Loops Poetry FTW! 🙌

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