Engaging intentional sound-making builds, develops and enhances executive function skills: inhibitory control and self-regulation, working memory, creativity and cognitive flexibility. A simple example of this is counting aloud from one to ten.
ACTIVITY IDEAS
Pitch
Let’s count from one to ten and alternate between a high and low pitch sound. The number one is high in pitch; two is low; three is high; four is low in pitch, and so on.
Count again but reverse the pitches. One is low; two is high…
Volume
Now, let’s only focus on volume and gain control from sounding out quiet to medium to loud:
Start very quietly in a whisper and gradually get louder and louder until the class is at its loudest point when sounding the number ten. Be sure to keep a steady pace and not speed up.
It is important that the number one should be extremely quiet, the number five at a medium volume, and the number ten at the loudest volume. As the sound gets louder, the texture of the voice will change from a whisper to a medium-sounding voice to a loud yell.
Also, you may notice that as your students get louder and then quieter, the pitch of the counting will rise and fall too. Being able to sound a steady pitch while counting and getting louder and then quieter is difficult, and makes for an excellent challenge of its own.
Duration
Now, let’s focus on duration (length). Make all of the numbers short in duration with a silence or space in between each. Maintain the count as you originally did: slowly, with a consistent, steady, recognisable pulse.
The second time counting from one to ten, sound out all the numbers but now long in duration and fill up the silence and space with the sound of the number. Again, slowly, with a consistent pulse.
For the next level use the same pulse, and sound out the first five numbers as short as possible; there should be silence and space in between each. The next numbers, six to ten, are long in duration with no silence or space in between. They should sound connected and flow into one another.
What matters most is that the space in between counting each number is the same regardless of whether the number is sounded out short with silence in between or long and connected. Most people speed up when making shorter sounds because they forget to include the space of silence in between each number, but do your best not to.
After all of your students can execute one to ten while sounding out the numbers as short and long sounds, add what we did with volume into the mix and go from quiet to medium to loud while sounding out one to five as short and six to ten as long.
Finally, do all of the variations as we did but in reverse by counting down from ten to one, and then put it together by counting forward and backward.
Case study: counting
Kristin, an educational coach to whomI was teaching Creative Sound Play, shared a story with me about children taking turns spinning around in the only cup on the playground.
At first, there were only two little boys, one spinning the cup and the other counting from one to 10. The boy counting was counting as fast as he could so he could get in the cup, causing the boy in the cup to get upset because he didn’t have enough time.
So the teacher, who loves working with Creative Sound Play, asked the boy, ‘How can you change the way you’re counting?’ At this point, he began counting slowly using pitch and duration. A long low sound for the number one, a short high sound for the number two, a long low sound for the number three, and high short sound for four, and so on up to 10.
I know his teacher had been doing something similar in class that week, but with the days of the week and sounding them out by syllables. Clearly, by engaging his working memory, he had an intentional way to sound out and count numbers in a deliberate way using pitch and duration, which simply helped him manage the time more appropriately. Then when they switched places, the boy who was in the cup came up with his own way of counting. This engaged his creativity, working memory and self-regulation. ‘And before you knew it…there were six boys taking turns counting, managing their time, and all counting in their own way.’
This article is an edited extract from Greenfield's book, Creative Sound Play for Young Learners.
