Body Parts, the Water Cycle, Plants, and Dolphins: Adventures in Primary-Grade Whole-Class Composing

This article describes the author's personal experiences leading primary grades in whole-class composing. Together they created songs inspired by topics the students were exploring in their homeroom classes. The author systematically describes the songwriting process they employed, identifying specific challenges encountered along the way. The first task was to identify a topic, then to create a song text. Next they explored and shared musical possibilities to match the text, one line at a time. They worked together to reach consensus on various aspects of the text and tune until they had a song. The author also describes how they made use of these songs as curriculum in the school music program.