Need Teaching Composition Ideas

[Shalott71]

I teach remedial composition at the college freshman level. My goal is to make writing fun and relevant. If anyone has some good ideas from teaching or being a student or are aware of any great sites, please post here.

TIA

[Unregistered]

When I was in college, our Harmony I professor gave us a bass line and then told us to harmonize it by adding chords etc. We could change the bass line (note values, suspentions, etc.) but that bass line had to be in there. This was treated as a major assignment, and we had well over a week to complete. The teacher was available to play compositions or to help if needed.

This was challenging but the class loved this beginning into composition. At the end he talked with each student individually and played some of their peice, telling them points he especially liked. Then every morning for a handful of mornings he would play one of our compositions on the piano without naming the owner.

The creativity of some were surprising! We all had only a basic grasp of harmony, but we all loved trying out new sounds and "making up" chord sounds that we liked. It got me interested in how music is composed and it felt great when, during our private talk about my peice, the teacher pointed out an unorthodox chord choice of mine and praised it as me discovering a type of jazz chord with an added 11th! He didn't have to critique much because on hearing their peice, students were often much harder on themselves than he would be.

I hope this helps a little.
-SR

[Unregistered]

When I taught the same course, I constantly used www.highschooljournalism.org for lesson plans on many relevant grammar/style/usage points. Good luck.