Exploring Compose World in a Reception Class
Judith Adelsberg, St Crispin's Infant School, Westgate

Compose World Junior is a music composition program for primary children. The package contains musical motifs in a number of pre-set styles that children can use to compose their own tunes using a simple 'drag and drop' approach.

Judith Adelsberg approached the work as an extension of ICT skills development, particularly focusing on children's acquisition of mouse skills and associated vocabulary. She became interested in children's musical response, noticing how four-year-olds were able to express preferences based on musical judgement. In addition to listening skills and mouse control, the program enables children to extend their experience of computers to manipulate sound, and compare with other technology such as tape recorders (see Early Learning Goals: Knowledge and Understanding of the World).

Introduction
Having been particularly fond of Compose on my BBC machine of yesteryear and then the Nimbus 186 version, I was delighted to explore the much refined Windows version a short while ago. Not only were all my old familiar tune files there, but I could now adjust the volume and the speed at which my compositions were playing and it was so easy to use! I could hardly wait to share it with my four year olds!

Previous ICT experiences
We had been building the children's mouse control with a number of programs that work by making selections with single clicks:

My World screens - e.g. Dress Teddy
Clicker 5 grids to make repeating patterns, Christmas card inserts and a talking book about our class
Oxford Reading Tree Talking Books
Making graphs with First Graph

Later we had introduced the idea of the drag and drop technique by using the various games in the 101 Easy Peasy Things to do with Your Computer CD-ROM. Most of my 26 children had become surprisingly proficient in selecting reasonably sized icons, but would they manage the necessary control as the icons became much smaller?

Introducing the program to the children
I set up a tune using all but one of the icons and looped the tune, so that when the children came into the classroom from playtime there was a tune playing continuously, but no picture. It did not take them long to track the source of the music down and about one second for my whizzkid to turn the screen on!

As the children listened, they noticed that the pictures were highlighted in sequence. Someone finally said that there were controls in the middle just like those on our tape-recorder. At this point we stopped the tune and began to talk about what we could see. Naturally they began to talk about the pictures and the words underneath (both can be removed if desired).

Then they asked to hear the tune again, so we took the looping off and got someone to press the play button using the left mouse button and his 'pointy finger'.
	Use this button to switch looping on or off.

The individual phrases underlying each picture pass too quickly to separate at this speed, so now I showed them how to select a phrase from the top row and make it play by double-clicking. It amazed me how quickly that skill was learned when it brought a reward with it. Now the chatter turned to preferences: "I like that one." "Ooh - it makes me want to laugh!" "Can we have that one again?"

This particular tune does not resolve itself in a way that is pleasing to the ear, so we began to talk about how to change the ending. As they are used to the rubbish bin concept from earlier work, coupled with the four year-old's growing fascination for deep, dark outer space, we related the deletion of the teapot icon to picking it up and dragging it to dump in the black hole in outer space! Now we chose another phrase to fill the gap.

Setting tasks for the children
Initially the children were left to play freely and encouraged to clear the screen by dumping the icons into the 'black hole'. Without much intervention, they started to work together, to discuss their tunes and to take turns to choose the next phrase.

As confidence grew, I set the children some specific tasks:

	Compose a tune, print out the screen, laminate it and ask the children to copy it. Ask the children if they liked it and invite them to improve it if they could.
	Write a half finished tune and ask the children to complete it, listening for phrases that sound like an ending.
	Ask the children to create a tune using a repeating pattern.

Next we explored some of the other tune files. Compose 4 proved to be a firm favourite - Chinese New Year not withstanding.

Summary Since these first activities, the children have learned to save their tunes, with help, and to load them from the list of the previous 6 tunes used. They play with the speed of the tunes happily, although they find it hard to explain what they've done! Some have even commented on the difference in the sounds - i.e. the difference in the instrumental timbre. I can only say that this has proved to be a most useful and enjoyable program and I am looking forward to exploring it further with my class.

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