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Christmas Lesson - Marty Christmas Orchestra

90 Minutes

Lesson Overview

Create or grab some musical instruments and code Marty to play your favourite Christmas carols by breaking down these classic songs into sections that can be played by each student group. Build up your musical robot group by adding more instruments!

Key vocabulary:

• Music

• Notes

• Sequence

• Instrument

• Repetition

Content Sections

  • Learning Objectives
  • Extensions & Challenges
  • Additional Reading
  • Christmas Lesson - Marty Christmas Orchestra

    90 Minutes

    Lesson Overview

    Create or grab some musical instruments and code Marty to play your favourite Christmas carols by breaking down these classic songs into sections that can be played by each student group. Build up your musical robot group by adding more instruments!

    Key vocabulary:

    • Music

    • Notes

    • Sequence

    • Instrument

    • Repetition

    • N/A
    • Laptop, PC, Tablet
    • Technologies/Music/Arts/Numeracy
    • Marty the Robots (number will depend on songs and instruments being used)

      • Access to compatible devices connected to Marty on Scratch/Python

      • Instruments for Marty to play (e.g. bells)

    Learning Objectives

    • Breakdown classic Christmas songs and consider where repetition happens

    • Code a sequence of different musical notes in time with the song

    1. Class discussion of what an orchestra is and the different roles played within one

    2. With the selected set of instruments, break students into groups to explore how they can code Marty to play the instruments

    3. Student groups should research different Christmas songs that they could code Marty to play with the instruments by analysing the musical notes required to play each song and checking if they could replicate this with their class set-up

    4. Either working as a class or small groups (depending on how many Marty’s and instruments you have) begin to sequence the different notes that need to be played and code them to happen in time one after the other

    5. Encouraging students to make small changes and frequently testing their programs and set aside some time at the end of the lesson to demonstrate the full song from the whole class/different groups

    Extensions & Support

    EXTENSIONS & CHALLENGES

    • What other songs could students recreate with this setup? (Music/Technologies/Numeracy)

    • What other instruments could be added to the setup? Drums? Boomwhackers? (Music/Technologies/Numeracy)

    • Include functions into the program to play different repeating sections of a song (Music/Technologies)

    Additional Reading

    • Marty the Robot Educator Guide

    • Educator FAQ

    • Example of our Marty orchestra using bells


    Learner Resources —