Using predetermined musical elements, either rhythmic or melodic, students compose a “music composition code” in small groups. Laying the individual lines of “musical composition code” on the ground, students add directional arrows to direct performers to the next line of “code” to create a larger musical composition.

Students learn to add music note values, and create compositions in 4/4, common time. Using traditional music  notation students may choose to compose for voice or drums. This ruler composition activity uses a familiar math visual to help students see the length or duration of musical notes. Final compositions can be emailed to the teacher for review.

Students use NYU Music Experience Design Lab: Groove Pizza to create drum and unpitched instrument rhythms with math-inspired concepts. Students create grooves using math concepts like shapes, angles and patterns. The circular rhythm app allows students to begin exploration with “specials” pizza presets and add/remove “toppings” to adjust the groove. Final student creations can be shared as a link, downloaded as a .wav or .midi file, and converted to external music notation software.

Vocabulary posters for the Alogrithms & Programming strand for Grade 5. Words included are from the 2017 Computer Science Curriculum Framework (created by Kelley Odom).Vocab Match-up game or activity for the following words in the category of Algorithms and Programming Grade 5: Algorithm, Author, Bug, Composer, Conditional, Debug, Decompose, Illustrator, Loop, Planning Tool, Pseudocode, Source, Storyboard, and Variable.