Lesson plan:

Explore signature music and theme songs

View the opening Lift Off theme and signature song from the very beginning of the episode, Heroes Lift Off 2 ep 10 Part A.

Discuss how the Lift Off theme sounds.

How does the Lift Off music make you feel?
Students can write or draw what the Lift Off music makes them feel or think about. For example: fun, excitement, mystery, friends, for kids.

Discuss the students' responses to the music and encourage them to give reasons for their responses. Discuss why a loud, busy, exciting tune like this, would have been chosen for Lift Off.

View the intros to other programs you recorded earlier that the students are familiar with. Discuss these theme songs and the students' responses to them.

View some examples from programs you recorded earlier that students may not be familiar with and ask them to imagine or guess what sort of program each might belong to and why. What is the purpose of a theme song? What do they tell the audience? How might they make the audience feel?

View the Lift Off theme song segment again and listen for sounds other than the music. There are numerous sound effects used to highlight the visual images. Identify some of the sounds and introduce the concept of sound effects. What do they add to the theme song?

Explore sound effects

View the opening sequence of Heroes Lift Off 2 Part A, until Raph and EC are looking out of the window at the rain.

Discuss the sounds of the storm.

Talk about the sound of the storm. List the different sounds e.g. rain, wind, thunder. Now try to describe them more accurately e.g. light rain, howling wind, thunder clapping. Discuss the notion of the storm's journey as it begins, climaxes and passes on. List all the words that the students can think of to describe stormy weather.

Create sound FX

Introduce a range of musical instruments e.g. shakers, cymbals, triangles and everyday objects like tins, marbles and spoons. Ask the students to experiment with making storm sounds. Students can work in groups to try and create the sound of a storm building up and going away. Groups can practise their sound effects by demonstrating them in front of the whole class. Ask the students to work in a quiet place to record their efforts on audio-tape. As a class, discuss the different characteristics of each group's performance.

View the tape again, this time focussing on the scene with Raph, Marco and Mrs Ponti in the kitchen having breakfast. Talk about the sound effects in this scene. Freeze frame the scene and ask individual students to improvise sounds e.g. Mrs Ponti walking on the tiles in high heels; Marco pouring breakfast cereal, Raph scraping his chair. After some time practising you may be able to play segments from the video without sound with the students attempting to match sound and scene.

Create an atmosphere - Music plays an important part in creating atmosphere.
View the Beverley documentary sequence in part A. It shows a series of activities with mother and baby animals. Now view it without sound.

Discuss why the music was chosen. Does it fit with the images? How does it end?

Tell a story

Introduce some still photographs or pictures of scenes e.g. a kitchen setting, animals in a forest, people walking on a bridge. Ask the students to choose a picture and work in pairs to list the sounds that could accompany such a scene. Once again supply a range of musical instruments and everyday objects that make a range of sounds. Ask the students to tell the story of the picture in sounds. Limit the number of sounds to four or five. This work could also be recorded and used as an assembly item to share with other classes in the school.