In Year Six, we used our prior learning about the orchestra, to explore a symphony and symphonic poem. In our English lessons we have been exploring a poem called ‘The Spark Catchers’ by Lemn Sissay and discovered that a composer called Hannah Kendall created a symphonic poem based on this. We listened carefully to musical phrases in the symphonic poem and thought about how texture and dynamics helped to bring the poem to life. We noticed that there were crescendos and the musicians used the sudden plucking technique, pizzicato. 

We discovered that when starting a composition, Kendall creates a graphic score by taking a line or a word from the text before drawing shapes to illustrate this. We did this for extracts from the poem, including the lines 'The molten madness of a spark' and  'The sulfurous spite filled spit of diablo' before developing this with percussion instruments. Taking inspiration from the effects created by Kendall, we included crescendos, the pizzicato technique and a glissando. 

We enjoyed recording our performances and watching this back to discuss our use of effects.