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Organisation
Corbets Tey School
Age group
13-15 year old, MLD class
Group size
6-8 students (whole class)
Session Leader
Jodie Hill, class teacher
Date
July 2017
Activity
40 minute, Music Lesson

Activity

Corbets Tey is a forward-looking SEN school in East London that has been using Cosmo to engage students in group music-making activities.
Jodie used Cosmo to facilitate an engaging and fun music lesson with her class of young teenagers, all of whom have moderate learning difficulties.
She used one of our Cosmo Lesson Plans as a basis and created a fantastic collaborative music lesson that gave ownership to the students and kept them really focused throughout the exercise.
How was Cosmo used?

Jodie was interested in developing a music lesson that would help improve her students’ listening skills, collaboration skills, and self-confidence. She used our ‘Be a Conductor’ lesson plan to create a group activity to help achieve this.

Each student was given their own Cosmoid, and they took turns triggering their instrument sounds while the rest of the class listened to them. Then Jodie split the class into two groups and introduced a conducting baton (it was a pencil!), signalling each group to start and stop playing at different times.

The next challenge was for the whole class to play together as an orchestra, with Jodie conducting individual students to start and stop. By the end of the lesson, all of the students had taken turns conducting the whole orchestra.

How did pupils respond?

The whole class were really engaged, and they clearly enjoyed playing their Cosmoids while the rest of the class listened to them. Jodie mentioned that some students stayed engaged in the activity for an impressive length of time.

What was challenging?

It was initially quite challenging to get each student to wait and listen to each other’s sounds. The students were understandably excited by these new devices that light up and create sounds, but they soon became more focused, and Jodie was able to instruct the students with their full attention.

What worked best?

Having the Cosmo Lesson Plan was really useful and made it easy to tie the music lesson into the school’s curriculum. It was great to see how Jodie kept adding new challenges to the lesson to keep her students engaged. They loved having their moments in the spotlight when everyone else was listening to their Cosmoid or following their instructions.

Having the Cosmo Lesson Plan was really useful and made it easy to tie the music lesson into the school’s curriculum. It was great to see how Jodie kept adding new challenges to the lesson to keep her students engaged. They loved having their moments in the spotlight when everyone else was listening to their Cosmoid or following their instructions.

Cosmo is so versatile and can be used with any age and ability across our school. The range of different activities really makes it accessible for so many of our students.

Susan Cumbers, Business Manager

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