Poem about Fen - Video

Our Dog, Fen (timbre, texture, silence)

Fen was my Border Collie and I wrote this poem about him for children to make music to. The music is intended to focus on expressiveness rather than on rhythm or pulse and the activity is easily adaptable to groups or whole classes, to everyone speaking, just individuals speaking, or just the teacher speaking. The process of activities like this is invaluable and the end result is satisfying. Here's Fen!

I'm going to show you a series of videos of the work we did using this poem with a small group. It works just as well with a whole class - you just have more children in each group. In the first video, I'm giving the children the chance to make a whole range of voice sounds at the start of the lesson, to plant the seed of the idea of being expressive according to word meanings.

• When our dog Fen was just a pup
• He used to fetch a ball
• He bounced on chairs
• He ran upstairs
• He jumped over the wall
• But now he's old he's good as gold
• He sleeps the hours away
• I wish that he was young again
• And he'd come out to play
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