Sound Vocabulary with Harry Potter

Our unit on sound energy always seems to land right around October. And, one of my favorite ways to introduce this unit is to break out one of the BEST scores ever composed - Harry Potter's Prologue.

To do this, I use TwistedWave Online Audio's browser based program that allows me to play any mp3 file on my computer and view the sound wave at the same time. (It's free.) I like that the yellow bar scrolls with the music allowing the students to see the frequency & amplitude and anticipate what will happen with the volume and pitch. This leads us to some great discussions and drawings on the board to label the parts of the song in its entirety.

Then, we define the vocabulary needed for fourth grade. Click here to get an interactive notebook freebie for the vocabulary.