STEM and Garageband - a fun and effective combination

This term, our Year 1 and 2 students have been exploring energy in Science and Technology, with a focus on sound energy - how it travels, how we can manipulate pitch and volume, and how our ears hear sounds.

To begin with, students practised their skill in taking photos and adding them to a Keynote Scavenger hunt.

 

Scavenger Hunt: Keynote document to take photos of different types of energy in the school environment.
Taking photos around the school to identify different sources of energy.

As part of our learning, students designed and created musical instruments from recycled materials, ensuring each instrument could produce at least two distinct sounds of varying pitch.

 

Constructing musical instruments from recycled materials
Constructing musical instruments from recycled materials
 
Constructing parts of a guitar using recycled materials
Constructing parts of a guitar using recycled materials

The students then recorded their instruments and incorporated these recordings into a song they composed using GarageBand.

 

Recording a musical instrument on Garageband
Recording a musical instrument on Garageband
 
Student with his recycled musical instrument
Student with his recycled musical instrument

Using Mark up, they even created their own 'album cover' to accompany their musical creation!

 

Using mark up to create an album cover of musical instrument
Using mark up to create an album cover of musical instrument
   
Using mark up to create an album cover of musical instrument
Using mark up to create an album cover of musical instrument

The students were highly engaged and immensely proud of their creations and there is no end to the creativity available in Garageband!

Have you run something like this in your class? What has worked for you? If so, please share in the comments below.

2 replies

July 07, 2024

Thanks for including the photos Mary! Love the student created guitar - so creative.

I bet your learners enjoyed the process and are much more “tuned in” to music and sound science. Pretty cool that they made their own songs with GarageBand. You really took them from sound theory, to instruments to music composition. What a super way to get students interested and engaged!

October 20, 2024

Hi, Mary. This is fantastic! What a great combination of digital and analogue. Don't think I'm not going to be suggesting this for our music teachers. I totally love the scavenger hunt, too.

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