Sound studio
View Sequence overviewStudents will:
- create sound using readily available items.
- observe movie/television sounds and the process for making them.
- demonstrate curiosity and ask questions about sounds and how we hear sounds.
Students will represent their understanding as they:
- contribute to discussions and a class mind map about common sounds, background sounds, how sounds are made and how we hear sound.
In the Launch phase, assessment is diagnostic.
Take note of:
- students’ descriptions and explanations about how sound is made.
- any explanations students offer about how we hear sounds.
- any connections students make between sounds being similar or different.
Whole class
Class science journal (digital or hard-copy)
Optional: Large piece of fabric, approx. 2m x 1m
An audio recording of students from your school in a noisy environment—see the Preparing for this sequence tab on the Sequence overview page for more information
Kelloggs LCMs 2010 Ad (0:30)
Old Disney Sound Effects | Side By Side Comparison (Jimmy MacDonald) (3:24)
Each group
Optional: Sound recording device e.g. iPad/phone/voice recorder
Readily available classroom or schoolyard items that can be used to make sounds such as textas, paper, leaves, twigs, ball, zips, etc.
Each student
Individual science journal (digital or hard-copy)
Lesson
The Launch phase is designed to increase the science capital in a classroom by asking questions that elicit and explore students’ experiences. It uses local and global contexts and real-world phenomena that inspire students to recognise and explore the science behind objects, events and phenomena that occur in the material world. It encourages students to ask questions, investigate concepts, and engage with the Core Concepts that anchor each unit.
The Launch phase is divided into four routines that:
- ensure students experience the science for themselves and empathise with people who experience the problems science seeks to solve (Experience and empathise)
- anchor the teaching sequence with the key ideas and core science concepts (Anchor)
- elicit students’ prior understanding (Elicit)
- and connect with the students’ lives, languages and interests (Connect).
Students arrive in the classroom with a variety of scientific experiences. This routine provides an opportunity to plan for a common shared experience for all students. The Experience may involve games, role-play, local excursions or yarning with people in the local community. This routine can involve a chance to Empathise with the people who experience the problems science seeks to solve.
When designing a teaching sequence, consider what experiences will be relevant to your students. Is there a location for an excursion, or people to talk to as part of an incursion? Are there local people in the community who might be able to talk about what they are doing? How could you set up your classroom to broaden the students’ thinking about the core science ideas? How could you provide a common experience that will provide a talking point throughout the sequence?
Read more about using the LIA FrameworkSecret sound
Discuss with students their previous experiences with using their senses to make scientific observations—how do we use our senses of sight, smell, touch taste ad hearing to make observations about the world around us?
Next, focus on the sense of hearing, asking students to close their eyes and focus on the sounds they can hear around them. As students name the sounds they think they hear, ask them how far away they think the sound is/was, where it may come from, and why they think that.
Explain that, in this sequence, students will be focused on sounds: actually working like scientists to 'observe' sound itself, including how sounds are made, how they travel so that we can hear them, and how we can 'control' them.
Students work in pairs to create a sound to present to the class. They might use any of the following to help make that sound:
- items found in the classroom
- items collected from the school grounds
- their own bodies, to make body percussion sounds such as stomping and clicking etc.
- items they can collect from the schoolyard such as leaves, stones, sticks etc.
- any combination of the above
Allow pairs time to devise a sound.
Pairs take turns to make their sound while the rest of the class close their eyes and attempt to guess what the sound is and how it is being made. Consider asking the sound makers to stand behind a screen to ensure their peers can’t see how the sound is being made.
High Tech: Students use a digital device (iPad/phone/voice recorder) to record sounds before playing them for their peers. This allows a greater variety of sounds to be made, because they can be made/recorded anywhere in the school grounds, rather than relying on objects that can be used in the classroom. It also removes the need for a screen.
The Launch phase is designed to increase the science capital in a classroom by asking questions that elicit and explore students’ experiences. It uses local and global contexts and real-world phenomena that inspire students to recognise and explore the science behind objects, events and phenomena that occur in the material world. It encourages students to ask questions, investigate concepts, and engage with the Core Concepts that anchor each unit.
The Launch phase is divided into four routines that:
- ensure students experience the science for themselves and empathise with people who experience the problems science seeks to solve (Experience and empathise)
- anchor the teaching sequence with the key ideas and core science concepts (Anchor)
- elicit students’ prior understanding (Elicit)
- and connect with the students’ lives, languages and interests (Connect).
The Elicit routine provides opportunities to identify students’ prior experiences, existing science capital and potential alternative conceptions related to the Core concepts. The diagnostic assessment allows teachers to support their students to build connections between what they already know and the teaching and learning that occurs during the Inquire cycle.
When designing a teaching sequence, consider when and where students may have been exposed to the core concepts and key ideas in the past. Imagine how a situation would have looked without any prior knowledge. What ideas and thoughts might students have used to explain the situation or phenomenon? What alternative conceptions might your students hold? How will you identify these?
The Deep connected learning in the ‘Pedagogical Toolbox: Deep connected learning’ provides a set of tools to identify common alternative conceptions to aid teachers during this routine.
Read more about using the LIA FrameworkSurround sound
Elicit students’ prior knowledge of sounds by creating a mind map in the class science journal, using the students’ actual vocabulary.
Encourage all students to share their ideas. Take note of any alternative conceptions to address during the inquire phase.
- What sounds did you hear today? What sounds can you hear at home? At the beach?
- At what other locations might you hear lots of interesting sounds? What sounds might you hear?
- Is our world ever completely silent?
- If you close your eyes and sit perfectly still, what can you hear?
- Breathing, someone wriggling, chair creaking etc.
- How is sound made?
- Sticks tapping together and our feet running over stones both make sound, what happens in both of these situations to create sound?
- How do we hear sound?
- Can everyone hear sounds? Why/Why not?
- Some people have hearing loss which means they are not able to hear as well as someone with normal hearing—this can be mild through to severe. Hearing loss can occur before birth or after, due to severe infection, very noisy environments, age etc.
- Why are sounds important to us?
The Launch phase is designed to increase the science capital in a classroom by asking questions that elicit and explore students’ experiences. It uses local and global contexts and real-world phenomena that inspire students to recognise and explore the science behind objects, events and phenomena that occur in the material world. It encourages students to ask questions, investigate concepts, and engage with the Core Concepts that anchor each unit.
The Launch phase is divided into four routines that:
- ensure students experience the science for themselves and empathise with people who experience the problems science seeks to solve (Experience and empathise)
- anchor the teaching sequence with the key ideas and core science concepts (Anchor)
- elicit students’ prior understanding (Elicit)
- and connect with the students’ lives, languages and interests (Connect).
Science education consists of a series of key ideas and core concepts that can explain objects, events and phenomena, and link them to the experiences encountered by students in their lives. The purpose of the Anchor routine is to identify the key ideas and concepts in a way that builds and deepens students’ understanding. During the Launch phase, the Anchor routine provides a lens through which to view the classroom context, and a way to frame the key knowledge and skills students will be learning.
When designing a teaching sequence, consider the core concepts and key ideas that are relevant. Break these into small bite-sized pieces that are relevant to the age and stage of your students. Consider possible alternative concepts that students might hold. How could you provide activities or ask questions that will allow students to consider what they know?
Movie magic
View the advertisement for Kelloggs LCM bars (0:30) and encourage students to count the number of different sounds they can hear.
Play the clip again and ask students to describe the sounds they can hear, for example students playing in the background, students talking, the sounds that happen when the students open their ‘designer’ lunchboxes.
Record students’ responses in the class science journal.
Next listen to the pre-recorded clip of students from the school. If you have recorded the discussion in video format, it may distract from the focus on the sounds that can be heard by sharing the visual images. Playing the audio only will support students to maintain their focus on what can be heard.
Discuss what can be heard in this clip, and how it differs from the LCMs ad that also showed students in a school environment. Particularly note any background noise that makes the students difficult to hear, how it is difficult to pick out specific sounds unless they are really loud, and how the ‘special sounds’ that were in the ad are not in this recorded clip.
Ask students what they think ‘sound effects’ are. Discuss and define the term as required: any sound, other than music or speech, artificially made to create an effect, used in TV, radio, cinema, video games and theatre.
Identify the two ‘special sounds’ heard when the students opened their ‘designer’ lunchboxes in the LCMs ad as sound effects. Ask students how they think the two sounds might have been made. Watch the ad again if required.
Explain that sound effects are recorded and added to films and advertisements after the acting scenes have been recorded. Ask students why they think this is done, referring to the comparison between the LCMs ad and the clip recorded at school as a starting point for the discussion.
- Which was clearer/louder/easier to hear: the LCMs ad, or the clip of the students from school talking?
- Why do you think that is?
- Did the clip I recorded have lots of background noise?
- Did it have any special sound effects?
- Why not?
- Did the LCMs ad have any special sound effects? What were they? Why do you think they included them?
- They added a special 'magic' sound that can be heard when the girl opens her lunchbox, and a car door sound when the boy opens his.
- When TV shows, ads, movies etc. are made, they often use special microphones to record the actors’ voices separately to the video, and then add the audio to the video later. Why do you think they might do that? What did you notice when listening to the recording made at our school that might help you to think about why?
- The special microphones mean they can record voices more clearly. They can help to make sure the sounds of people talking are louder than the background noise, so that they, and any sound effects or background music, are clearly heard by the viewer,
As a class watch the video Old Disney Sound Effects | Side By Side Comparison (Jimmy MacDonald) (3:24). Explain that the video is split into two frames: one frame shows clips from cartoons, and the other frame shows people recording the sound effects to go with the cartoon clip. Ask students to take notice of the objects being used to make the sound effects, and if they are the same or different to what is happening in the cartoon.
You might like to watch the clip once in its entirety, then watch it again, pausing at strategic intervals to discuss specific sounds with students. For example, note that when Donald Duck can be seen attending to a fire, an actual bell and siren are used to make the bell and siren sound effects seen in the cartoon. However, when the seven dwarves fall down the stairs the sound effect is made by wooden crates being knocked over, and frog croaks are represented by playing a string stretched between a coffee can and a wooden frame.
- What sounds did you hear in the clips?
- What objects did you see making those sounds?
- Do they always use the actual object you would expect to make the sound we hear? Did they use a real frog for the frog sound?
- What did they use to make the frog sound?
- Why don’t they use a real frog, or a real train?
- To be kind to animals, it’s difficult to make a frog croak at the exact right moment, the sounds are recorded in a studio where large items like trains can’t be taken etc.
- Why do they record in a studio/special room?
- In the studio they can control the sounds and ensure there are no background noises like cars and aeroplanes etc.
- Why do you think they add sound effects to movies and advertisements? How did the 'magic' sound effect make the LCMs ad more interesting?
Optional: Watch more ads with interesting sound effects and discuss them with students. For example, this ad for Specsavers (0:30) or this ad for Cadbury chocolate (0:14).
Core concepts and key ideas
Where does this sequence fit into the larger picture of science and the science curriculum?
When planning for teaching in your classroom, it can be useful to see where a sequence fits into the larger picture of science. This unit is anchored to the Science Understanding core concepts for Physical sciences.
- Energy can be transferred and transformed from one form to another and is conserved within systems.
In Year 2, this involves recognising that sound energy is transferred by vibrations (movement) and that different materials and actions make a variety of sounds.
This core concept is linked to the key science ideas:
- The shape and properties of parts of objects or living things relates to the sounds they produce. (Form and function)
- Complex sounds can be broken into smaller pieces, put together or rearranged. (Matter and energy)
- Sounds can be grouped according to volume and pitch. (Patterns, order, and organisation)
- Sound and vibrations may occur slowly or rapidly, and some things appear to sound the same. (Stability and change)
- Relative language can be used to compare objects and phenomena and describe change (bigger/smaller, faster/slower, louder/softer). (Scale and measurement)
When your students next progress through this core concept, they will identify sources of heat energy and examine how temperature changes when heat energy is transferred from one object to another (Year 3).
When planning for teaching in your classroom, it can be useful to see where a sequence fits into the larger picture of science. This unit is anchored to the Science Understanding core concepts for Physical sciences.
- Energy can be transferred and transformed from one form to another and is conserved within systems.
In Year 2, this involves recognising that sound energy is transferred by vibrations (movement) and that different materials and actions make a variety of sounds.
This core concept is linked to the key science ideas:
- The shape and properties of parts of objects or living things relates to the sounds they produce. (Form and function)
- Complex sounds can be broken into smaller pieces, put together or rearranged. (Matter and energy)
- Sounds can be grouped according to volume and pitch. (Patterns, order, and organisation)
- Sound and vibrations may occur slowly or rapidly, and some things appear to sound the same. (Stability and change)
- Relative language can be used to compare objects and phenomena and describe change (bigger/smaller, faster/slower, louder/softer). (Scale and measurement)
When your students next progress through this core concept, they will identify sources of heat energy and examine how temperature changes when heat energy is transferred from one object to another (Year 3).
The Launch phase is designed to increase the science capital in a classroom by asking questions that elicit and explore students’ experiences. It uses local and global contexts and real-world phenomena that inspire students to recognise and explore the science behind objects, events and phenomena that occur in the material world. It encourages students to ask questions, investigate concepts, and engage with the Core Concepts that anchor each unit.
The Launch phase is divided into four routines that:
- ensure students experience the science for themselves and empathise with people who experience the problems science seeks to solve (Experience and empathise)
- anchor the teaching sequence with the key ideas and core science concepts (Anchor)
- elicit students’ prior understanding (Elicit)
- and connect with the students’ lives, languages and interests (Connect).
Each student comes to the classroom with experiences made up from science-related knowledge, attitudes, experiences and resources in their life. The Connect routine is designed to tap into these experiences and that of their wider community. It is also an opportunity to yarn with community leaders (where appropriate) to gain an understanding of the student’s lives, languages and interests. In the Launch phase, this routine identifies and uses the science capital of students as the foundation of the teaching sequence so students can appreciate the relevance of their learning and its potential impact on future decisions. In short, this routine moves beyond scientific literacy and increases the science capital in the classroom and science identity of the students.
When planning a teaching sequence, take an interest in the lives of your students. What are their hobbies, how do they travel to and from school? What might have happened in the lives of your students (i.e. blackouts) that might be relevant to your next teaching sequence? What context might be of interest to your students?
Read more about using the LIA FrameworkHow can we use our learning?
Link the context and content of the teaching sequence by introducing the term ‘foley’: the word used to describe the creation of sounds especially for movie and television. The process is named after Jack Foley who was a sound-effect pioneer in the 1930s. The methods he devised are still used today.
Explain that, at the end of the sequence, students will apply what they have learned about sound to make sound effects that fit a ‘scene’ based on a prompt. This is a good time to introduce this prompt, so that students can reflect on how they might make sounds for it over the course of the sequence. See the Preparing for this sequence tab in the Sequence overview for more information about selecting a prompt.
If appropriate, discuss how you will share the sound effects students create will an audience. You might like to share the special effects during a class or school event, such as a school concert or assembly. Inform students of the selected mode for sharing their special effects.
Support students to generate any questions they have about sound, how sounds are made, how we hear them and what that might mean for creating sound effects.
In the class science journal, record student questions (and group similar questions) to refer back to during the course of the unit.
Reflect on the lesson
You might:
- begin a word wall related to sound.
- begin building a sound table and encourage students to bring along items to add to the table that make interesting sounds, such as dry leaves to crackle, sticks to tap together, bubble wrap that can be popped etc.
Student-generated questions
How can you support your students to generate questions on a topic?
Drawing on students’ questions for investigations in this sequence is a great way to support student engagement, agency and highlight the relevance of the learning to their daily lives.
Allowing and supporting students to ask their own questions at this point in the sequence will allow you the opportunity to relate their questions to the planned investigations, making modifications and/or additions where required.
The Question Formulation Technique (Santana & Rothstein, 2018) outlines four steps for students to generate, refine, and select useful questions. This includes:
- Examine stimulus
- Brainstorm questions
- Improve questions: change closed questions or statements into open questions.
- Prioritise questions according to importance, ability to be investigated, what will help with the Act phase, and how it will be answered.
Students should work together in small groups of 3-5.
Drawing on students’ questions for investigations in this sequence is a great way to support student engagement, agency and highlight the relevance of the learning to their daily lives.
Allowing and supporting students to ask their own questions at this point in the sequence will allow you the opportunity to relate their questions to the planned investigations, making modifications and/or additions where required.
The Question Formulation Technique (Santana & Rothstein, 2018) outlines four steps for students to generate, refine, and select useful questions. This includes:
- Examine stimulus
- Brainstorm questions
- Improve questions: change closed questions or statements into open questions.
- Prioritise questions according to importance, ability to be investigated, what will help with the Act phase, and how it will be answered.
Students should work together in small groups of 3-5.
Sound tables
How does building a sound table support students' conceptual development?
A sound table should be filled with objects, either collected by the teacher or the students themselves, which are capable of making interesting sounds when manipulated in a particular way. It supports students to develop their understanding about how different actions create different sounds.
Items selected for the sound table might include leaves, paper, spoons, bubble wrap, bottles of rice/popcorn/buttons, cotton wool, bowls of pebbles etc.
The sound table is intriguing to many students and something they can all experience success contributing to. It also provides an opportunity for students to share their knowledge and experiences, reinforcing that we value them and their understandings.
Encourage students to use the items to make sounds, particularly how they might create different sounds with the same object, and how they manipulated this object to make the different sounds.
Special items (such as musical instruments) may need to be returned to students or other classes, so care should be taken with these. You might note that certain items are not to be touched. A collection of small boxes/tubs/trays can help to keep those items sorted and named while on the table. It may be simpler to only permit items onto the table that can be touched by everyone, to encourage free exploration.
A sound table should be filled with objects, either collected by the teacher or the students themselves, which are capable of making interesting sounds when manipulated in a particular way. It supports students to develop their understanding about how different actions create different sounds.
Items selected for the sound table might include leaves, paper, spoons, bubble wrap, bottles of rice/popcorn/buttons, cotton wool, bowls of pebbles etc.
The sound table is intriguing to many students and something they can all experience success contributing to. It also provides an opportunity for students to share their knowledge and experiences, reinforcing that we value them and their understandings.
Encourage students to use the items to make sounds, particularly how they might create different sounds with the same object, and how they manipulated this object to make the different sounds.
Special items (such as musical instruments) may need to be returned to students or other classes, so care should be taken with these. You might note that certain items are not to be touched. A collection of small boxes/tubs/trays can help to keep those items sorted and named while on the table. It may be simpler to only permit items onto the table that can be touched by everyone, to encourage free exploration.