Activity #2: Writing a poem (http://p22.com/musicfont/)

Level: Pre-Intermediate

Grammar focus:  recapitulation (Phonetics: pronunciation of some vowels and diphthongs)

Vocabulary focus: revision of vocabulary seen in a series of poems; rhyming words

Brief description of the activity: After reading a series of poems and clarifying vocabulary, the teacher elicits the rhyming words and makes students add more to the list. The class is divided in pairs or groups of three and they are given a number of words from the list to create a poem.  Once the poems are created and read in class, students use this website to convert their pieces of writing into a musical composition, which will be displayed in musical notation and simultaneously generated as a midi file. 

Each student may create his/her own musical composition with the same piece of writing. 

In my opinion, the use of this website can help teachers give writing activities a funny twist.

A step-by-step guide to use the website:

1- Go to http://p22.com/musicfont/ , copy your piece of writing and paste it into the 
     corresponding box (next to ‘Your Text’). You also have to provide a name for the 
     file you are about to generate (you cannot use numbers, just upper or lower case 
     letters with no spaces)

         
                                                                           
2- Then, you have to set the BPM (Beats Per Minute); '120' is set by default. Finally, you
     select the musical instrument; there are plenty of possibilities



3- Click on 'Generate your music!' The composition will display and play. You may save
     your midi file for future use and print your sheet music

            

For some website features plus sample click here

Students will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

	Poor	Just fair	Good	Very good	Excellent
Usage of tool
Written production
Oral production