Year 6 at St. Michael’s Academy in Flanshaw, Wakefield are learning about physical geography in the next few weeks with their class teachers. To support this we composed some musical rivers in their first ever music lessons with Cheryl. We explored some features of rivers such as tributaries, a confluence, meanders, estuaries, waterfalls and lakes, and we learned that rivers usually start up in the mountains and are fast flowing and small, and they usually end at the sea, where they are big and mighty.

6B included a confluence (where the bells stream met the boomwhacker stream) and a huge meander. Their river, which they called the River Of Raymond, became very mighty indeed as it flowed into the sea. They learned some musical symbols for notes and rests and made all sorts of decisions about the structure of their composition.

6c included a waterfall, some frogs in a lake, some golden fish swimming upstream, and some gentle waves as the sea met the beach. They also discovered the musical symbols for “getting quieter” or diminuendo and some other dynamics. Their river was the Musical Magical River.

You can hear both rivers and see their graphic scores here.