A trip into town

Dear Parents,
I am trying to plan a walk around the city next week where we will record the sounds of the city for our Inquiry and music project. Before I can plan anymore I need to find out how many parents are able to follow along to help out for the day. The idea is for year 4 to spend a few hours going to different predetermined areas of the city to record sounds (this could be something like a building site, train station, shopping mall, etc). I was thinking of doing this next Friday morning between 9.00 and 12.30 (back for lunch), we will need at least 4 parent helpers for the day so we can make five groups. If you can help out please email me and if you would like to help out but can do it on Friday please email me with the day that you can. We might find that most parents can only help out on say, a Thursday for example. Why are we doing this? As you know we have started our Inquiry unit about cities and the infrastructures that keep a city running. When I was planning some of this unit I thought that it would be beneficial for the students to become connected to the city and to stop the unit from becoming just six weeks of research. Thinking along these lines reminded me of when I lived in the outback after high school and when I would drive eight hours to Sydney to visit friends. The first thing that struck me every time I got out of my car was the noise the city made and how many different noises there was. This is something we block-out when we constantly live in a city. So why can't we make a type of music using the noise of the city? What would the song of Göteborg be according to the students? I talked to Joel who liked the idea and together we made a plan to make an installation in the school to show others as well. We talked to Joe in art as well and he has developed a plan for the students to build an installation for the 'music'. By doing this we will be letting the students make an audio and visual sensory connection to our unit and to the city as well as to isolate different types of infrastructure and to see and hear how it works. Ultimately we will know if the project has worked if it changes our connection and view of what a city is and it makes others stop, listen, look, and think.


 Regards, Christian.