Elements of Music Graffiti Board Lesson

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The graffiti board is a technique that can be used in classrooms across the many teaching disciplines and age groups.

I recently used this technique to lead my class of Year 7 students to think about and discuss the elements of music.

I asked each student to think of a word used to describe the sound of music. I had to emphasize that I didn’t want words that described how it made them feel….. such as happy or relaxed, only words that described the sound of the music itself.

I then gave a couple of examples by asking – what words can describe a lullaby? After this, they were on a roll! Soft and slow were the first answers to come from the students.

Each student came up and wrote a word that could be used to describe the sound of music on the GRAFFITI board!

This process continued until the flow of words slowed, and the GRAFFITI board looked very full!

The next step was to categorize the words according to the elements of music.

I deliberately chose the word FAST and asked what the word described about music. The initial reply was that it described the speed of the music. It is important to establish the correct terminology at this point, and so after a little more prompting, the students gave me the word TEMPO.

Students were then asked to locate other words on the GRAFFITI board that described the TEMPO of music.

We continued this way to establish the other elements of music.

Finally, students were given two worksheets on which they were asked to write each of the words on the Graffiti board in the column of the correct element of music.