Shawn Lees-Carr

SLM 521

Multimedia (1 of 3)

Audio on the Web Elective

Unit: Poetry

Primary objective/Product: Students will identify the mood and tones created by sounds to help reinforce denotation and connotation. Students will also select sounds to create their own “sound” poem, which will then be traded for to a “writer,” who will put words to the sounds.

Warm-Up: Can sounds represent emotion?

How can sounds connect to the meaning of a piece of text or a group of words?

Further probing question: When you listen to sounds, do you find the words or the music more powerful?

Activity: Students will get out their list of tone/mood words and in groups brainstorm songs that could fit any of the descriptors. They will categorize them, and determine if it’s the music or the words that create the most impact.

Whole group will discuss songs where the music sets the tone.

Then the teacher will play short sound effects to model connecting sound with emotion.

Sound effects are from http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/

· Click on each box below to play the sound.

· Then brainstorm what possible mood or emotion could be connected to the sound.

· After determining a possible mood, brainstorm words that would be included to create that mood. For example, if the mood was anxious, some of the words we would expect to find are: nervous, glancing, shifting, sweating

Warning:

Scuba bubbles:

Traffic jam:

After discussing how short sounds can create emotions and moods, students will be assigned different clips of music taken from America Memory.

American Memory from the Library of Congress -http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/

Each group will listen to their assigned clip and determine the mood/tone. They then will develop words (lyrics) to match the mood conveyed by the songs.

Music Clip 1

Music Clip 2:

Music Clip 3:

Music Clip 4:

Music Clip 5:

NOTE: After constructing this activity in this format, I realized that perhaps it would be better presented through powerpoint that students could also open in the lab.