Students were given their recorders and recorder music for "Ode to Joy." Ms. Mary Ann Addis asked the students, “How would you perform this song if I gave you these beakers, a jug of water, and markers?”
The students answered that the water poured into the beakers would produce sounds and notes. They experimented together to learn that some of the beakers that looked the same actually produced different sounds, in which we were now referencing them as pitches. Some of the beakers were thicker in density and we assumed this made the beakers different pitches. We noted that many of the empty beakers were pitched at G. As we moved through the lesson, the students learned that when they added water to the beaker, it lowered the pitch. The students then used their recorders to define the pitches B, A and G so that they could determine if they could get their beakers to match the pitch. Groups had fun in competing to match the pitches.