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Lesson · Grade 3 · Arts Education

Writing Sounds Down: High and Low on a Staff

  • Grade 3
  • Arts Education
  • 1 min 18 s
  • British Columbia
  • BC3-AR-08

Children hear a little tune and first write it with symbols they invent, a pink triangle for a high sound and a blue square for a low sound, then read it back as a moving line plays each mark. The same tune then drops onto a three-line staff, where a note high on the staff sounds high, a note low sounds low, the middle line sounds in between, and three climbing notes show that the higher a note sits on the staff, the higher it sounds.

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In one sentence

The question this lesson answers

How can we write sounds down on paper?

We can invent a symbol, like a triangle for a high sound.

Transcript

What the lesson says

How can we write sounds down on paper?

We can invent a symbol, like a triangle for a high sound.

And we can use a square for a low sound.

Now we can write a tune: high, low, low, high.

Many musicians write sounds on lines called a staff.

A real staff has five lines. We will start with three: one, two, three.

A note high on the staff is a high sound.

A note low on the staff is a low sound.

A note on the middle line sounds in between.

Let's put our tune on the staff: high, low, low, high.

We read the notes from left to right.

Notes that climb up the staff sound higher and higher.

The higher a note sits on the staff, the higher it sounds.

Curriculum

Where this fits

British Columbia, Grade 3

Arts Education, Music: notation to represent sounds, ideas, and movementBC3-AR-08

Previous: Pitch, Dynamics and Timbre: How High, How Loud, What Kind of Sound

The outcomes and strands follow the British Columbia curriculum.

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