Year 8 can spot alliteration in Wilfred Owen's 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', written in 1917, but find it hard to say what the sounds do. The teacher opens the Spectrogram in Chrome Music Lab on the board, switches on the laptop microphone and asks for silence; nothing is recorded or saved. The teacher reads line 3, 'Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle', slowly and close to the microphone, as tried out before the lesson, and the class watches the picture scroll across: the line shows as a run of short patches with dark gaps between them. Then the teacher reads the last line, 'And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds', and the display shows fewer, longer patches that drift up and down as the voice rises and falls. The teacher reads each line twice more so the class can see that the difference holds.
Students sketch the two shapes beside the lines on their printed copy, then write a paragraph in their books on how the sound of line 3 copies rifle fire and how the last line slows the poem into mourning.
Tools: Chrome Music Lab Nine ideas for your own version in Generate
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.