Movement and Music While Learning about the I.S.S.

Thank you to Commander Hadfield, The National Film Board of Canada, the Canadian Space Agency and NASA, I was able to show students different robots and machines on the International Space Station.  Having viewed these videos, students moved and played instruments to match the movements of these machines, thereby learning about the I.S.S. through music and movement (dance).

I was inspired by listening to Commander Hadfield speaking about playing music in space:

“…I want to do my absolute best to try and capture some of this experience as many different ways as I can…. Hopefully some of the music that I play up here, that maybe the song that Ed Robertson and I wrote together that will be played in schools all across Canada under the MusiCounts program, the Coalition for Music Education… to think that there are choirs… there are schools for the deaf that have already made a version of it, it’s being put into other languages, that song joining people together through a common theme and using it to try and understand a new experience… that’s what music’s all about…”

It is great to see the NFB Space School website, with it’s impressive opening graphic!  I would show this to start the learning, to immediately interest them!

I started with the machines for exercise, such as the treadmill.  I pointed out that this is not an unusual piece of equipment, but that it is very important on the space station.  Commander Hadfield explains why here:

All of these videos that were made are so helpful for understanding the experience on the Space Station.  I found out about all of the machines by reading Commander Hadfield’s tweets.  In the same video, he uses the ARED machine (Advanced Restrictive Exercise Device).  Some students imitated running, while others used their arms to imitate moving up and down as on the ARED.  Certainly one could do squats like one would with the ARED, but unless someone regularly does squats on a daily basis, this is going to hurt after a few minutes, so just in case I asked them to just use their arms to get the idea of ascending and descending.  Then other students used instruments to match the movements.

We moved on to Robonaut 2:

Students certainly enjoyed moving like a robot!  Again, others matched these movements with instruments (see below for how the instruments work together).

Then we learned about the Canadarm, and Dextre, both of which we talked about how they will be featured on the new 5 dollar bill which I believe comes out in November:

Then we added in those instruments and movements.  To look like the Canadarm, one student used the lowest C for Boomwhackers, and moved their arms very slowly.  I happened to have broken my foot at the same time as doing this lesson, so I can say that crutches worked too!  The student who acted as Dextre used the mid-sized C Boomwhackers.

Here are the instrument parts:

Wow… that is pretty small!  Hope it can expand!  Anyway, to begin or end, students could do the chorus of the ISS song (Is Somebody Singing) with the tonic on the barred instruments playing C, or you could have a soundscape of the Soyuz taking off to come to the Space Station and docking (you can hear that sound here on Commander Hadfield’s Soundcloud page:

then returning to earth…

Again, much thanks to all of the people and organizations listed above for sharing with the world, and letting students learn about space through music!