Music Integration in English Class

“Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand.”

It is always a delight for the children when we teach them something beyond the text. A real-life connect adds a new dimension to better understanding and learning. Today was a unique experience for the students of class IX when the English teacher Ms. Surbhi Saran organized a session on percussion to teach the lesson The Sound of Music’

The lesson talks about two legendary artists Ms. Evelyn Glennie and Late Ustad Bismillah Khan. Since Evelyn Glennie is a renowned percussionist, Ms. Surbhi invited Mr. Arunesh Pandey as a special guest to her class for a percussion session. This she hoped would make the students aware about what percussion is and experience it live.

In the session Mr. Arunesh discussed about percussion and shared some of the Indian percussion  instruments. He showed them ‘dholak’, ‘tabla of various scales’ and a mud bowl. He played them in the class one by one to enable the students to understand their sound and then shared their usage in the music field. He also played fusion on tabla using tablas of various scales.  Later, he played some music on a mud bowl and presented a fusion using mud bowl and tabla.

To enable the students to understand its usage in singing Ms. Surbhi sang a song and Ms. Arunesh accompanied on the tabla  Our student Mihir Tandon also presented a rap in the class. Arunesh Sir followed the beats of the rap and recreated that using the tablabol/words  and recited them. It was a delight to watch his ‘tablabol’ in a rap form. Everybody was enthralled listening  to this fusion. Subsequently Sir played the same words/bol on tabla which took us on cloud nine.

After the session some of the students put up their queries related to percussion instruments.

It was indeed an enriching English class in which  the students learnt about percussion and some of the instruments used in percussion.