Here is series of lessons that has a structure and running order which might make this a useful unit to run in conjunction with a science and social literacy study of sound and acoustics.  It wouldn't be difficult to find other appropriate learning areas. I've presented it through the eyes of a fictitious teacher. I hope this idea works for you!

Middle through Upper Primary

A description of the unit

Through questions, discussion and student tasks this unit introduces and contrasts two terms fundamental to involvement in activities involving sound, that is 'Listening' and 'Hearing'.

Anticipated learning outcomes

As a result of studying this unit students should demonstrate
the knowledge and understanding that

• receiving sound depends on our sense of hearing
• hearing goes with having ears, but does not necessary imply awareness
• listening involves active participation and awareness in aural activity
• our brains are able to block out sounds we do not wish to hear
• sound and silence may occur naturally, environmentally, randomly
• sound and silence are interdependent
• silence is the absence of sound
• sound exists in time and may have pitch, texture, power (dynamics) and timbre (tone colour)
• sound and silence may be manipulated deliberately
• using contrasting and repetitive themes and ideas helps to unify an art work:  about tension and release, or repetition and contrast, patterns
• sound may be recorded, and how: aurally, graphically as notation, or mechanically
• creative culturally manipulated sound may be re-created through performance
• sound may be deliberately created in a number of different ways
• sound makers, as musical instruments, belong to families
• how these families of instruments are organised depends on the reasons for organising them

the ability to

• distinguish between listening and hearing
• listen discriminately and sensitively to sounds, both random and organised
• identify which are cultural and which are natural
• discuss/write about what defines cultural/natural sound
• describe sounds aurally/in writing
• map and organise sequences of sound aurally, graphically
• represent sounds graphically as symbols which illustrate the various properties of sound (such as duration, pitch, power)
• by employing repetitive and contrasting themes in a sound sequence, effectively arrange sound and silence in a sound and silence sequence
• map and graphically record sound sequences in time to be re-created in subsequent performance
• make decisions about and create and manufacture effective sound makers
• incorporate these sound makers in the creation of sound sculptures

Work Requirements

Students should undertake the following tasks

• listen to, list and/or record environmental sounds heard in the school grounds
• map sounds heard graphically and recreate them in a performance
• write a paragraph recording their participation in the unit.

Resources

1. White and/or black board/ or Overhead Projector
2. Prepared audio-tape of pre-recorded sounds
3. Ear plugs (these must be the correct plugs, and new and hygenically clean. They must not be shared.)
4. White or blackboard   
5. Students' Music Journals
6. Tape-recorders (not essential)   
7. Butchers' Paper '(Newsprint) and Textas (Felt-tipped marking pens)
   
8. Butchers paper and textas
9. White or blackboards
10. Sound makers

Assessment

Active participation as a class member, in the unit, particularly in collection, discussion and performance, of written journal record of unit.

Organisation of the lessons

Notice that the organisation of the lessons themselves is more like a social literacy learning model constructed around a potentially recursive cycle of 'stimulus', 'talk about', 'shared task', 'student task', 'assessment point', 'assessment criteria', and opportunities throughout for reflection when teacher and students talk about the following questions:

1.    Listen... what do you hear?

Teaching and learning strategies

Mr Bolton has an urban composite year five, six and seven class.  Before the first lesson of the unit begins he writes carefully on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom a focus question to stimulate interest, asking the class 'What is the difference between 'HEARING' and 'LISTENING'?'  He hopes that his students will participate in discussion and activities, exploring the differences between hearing and listening, and sound and silence.
Mr Bolton directs the class to close their eyes for thirty seconds to listen, in silence, to all of the sounds around them, both in the room and, externally through doors, windows and walls, sounds outside the room.  He suggests they particularly listen for and list sounds of which they are normally unaware in the classroom.  At the end of that time he asks, 'What did you hear?'  Then, at his request, a student lists, on the whiteboard, the sounds members of the class heard over the thirty seconds. 
Mr Bolton has asked the Hearing Impairment Specialist who visits students at the school every week for malleable plastic ear plugs.  From this part of the unit onwards he invites individuals within the class sto take turns of up to fifteen minutes duration, to be 'hearing impaired' within the classroom.   He forewarns those members who volunteer that they may find this a frustrating experience.  However, at the same time, he reminds them that for genuinely hearing impaired students this temporary discomfort is often a permanent reality. 
Mr Bolton now  shares the twenty six members of his class between six groups of four and five students.  He distributes butchers paper and textas between these groups and instruct students to sort the whiteboard list of sounds into those which are natural and those which are 'cultural' or made by people.
At the end of this particular exercise, as an assessment point  each group presents, through a nominated reporter, its re-organised list of sounds.  Mr Bolton also notes student participation as a performance indicator
In ensuing discussion Mr Bolton encourages his students to talk about why, normally, they are not aware of all of these sounds around them. What happens that makes this possible?  Mr Bolton explains that our brains block out those sounds which we do not need to listen to, asking, how would they function if they were?  'What, then', he concludes with the question, 'is the difference between listening and hearing?'
By way of a shared task Mr Bolton has a student draw up two columns on the board, one for 'LISTENING' and one for 'HEARING'.  The class identifies and lists words and phrases which contrast the two words.

Now Mr Bolton displays his 'LISTEN' chart and after he and the class have read through it aloud, turning it into a kind of game with different groups taking a line, they talk about how this chart describes the 'Listening' process. Mr Bolton asks 'Is it an accurate description?'
Next Mr Bolton has his students move back into smaller groups and they attempt to role-play the 'LISTEN' chart, with one person taking the role of speaker.  He or she talks about 'Hearing and Listening' while the rest act out each direction.

LISTEN........

As an arts related task students design their own wall posters using the words of the 'LISTEN' chart.  An assessment point is provided as student posters are displayed within the classroom and elsewhere in the school.  The impact of these wall posters provides a performance indicator for Mr Bolton's assessment notes.
Using an audio-tape and cassette recorder a group of students records a 'silent period of time of two minutes' in the classroom.  This requires the rest of the class to be absolutely quite for that time. Following this the group plays the tape back to the class in an equivalent silence.  Then the class talks about  'How silent was our 'silence'.  'What should a silence 'sound' like?' 'Of what use is silence?'  As Mr Bolton intends developing this theme in the following lesson, he is happy for the discussion to be superficial.
However he does insist they each write a sentence in their journals describing what they thought 'silence' meant.
As they reflect on the lesson Mr Bolton and his students respond to the following questions.  When is it important to listen? Is our classroom ever silent?  What do we mean by silence?  For example, when Mr Bolton asks the class to be silent - is it then truly silent?  Then, for those students who experienced being 'hearing impaired' he asks 'How did it feel to be deaf?'

Evaluation

As the lesson concludes Mr Bolton asks himself: 
Did the students generally enjoy the unit? Did they achieve the learning outcomes? Were the activities appropriate to this particular group? Do I need to incorporate more language activities to help students understand and talk about what they are doing?
Then as part of his own forward planning he asks,  'Where do I go from here? Continue with the next unit in this teaching/learning sequence, ie 'Sound Around Us'. How do I build on to what they have learned here? Support and confirm the listening outcomes of this unit elsewhere in class work.   Listening is critical to all teaching/learning settings.

2. Sounds Around Us

A brief description of the Lesson

In this lesson Mr Bolton and his students will focus their teaching and learning on gaining an increased awareness of the sounds in their own external school environment. To facilitate this they will share activities such as walking together around the school grounds, listening to the sounds which occur there, recording these aurally or in writing and, through follow up discussion and tasks, making decisions about what they believe sound and silence are.
In this lesson Mr Bolton introduces concepts related to random environmental sound and silence and has the class survey ways of recording and re-presenting them away from the soundscapes in which they naturally occur. He also encourages students to distinguish between hearing and listening, random and deliberate sound, natural and 'cultural' sound.  The integralness of sound with silence is also introduced.
For this lesson Mr Brown's focus question, which he writes on the whiteboard, is  'What is sound?'
Once they have settled Mr Bolton explains that he wants them to focus on sounds within their own school.  He has already explained to the principal that his class will be 'touring'.  Now he takes the class on a sound data collection exploration of the school buildings and grounds.
A couple of students have charge of tape recorders to tape sounds and 'sound-scapes'.  
However he encourages his students to rely more on their aural memories to recollect what they hear and where they have heard it, supported by  notes in their journals where he suggests they list the sounds they hear and note their context.  So, as his students 'travel' with him - and prompted by Mr Bolton - they list sounds they hear and also contrasting soundscapes such as those where there is an echo and those which seem 'dead'.
As they walk with Mr Bolton he encourages the class to talk about which sounds they hear, where they hear these sounds, who or what is making them, including whether they are natural or made, in some way, by people,  which sounds are deliberate or organised, and which sounds happen randomly.  Mr Bolton also encourages students to invent and ask their own questions.
Back in the classroom  Mr Bolton has a student list the sounds they heard on the board and note particularly interesting 'soundscapes'.   They discuss what was heard and where, which sounds they found most interesting, and why.
As a further shared task  they firstly visually map the collecting of the sounds graphically using symbols for sounds, and aurally 'walk' the school through a 'sound' re-creation of the journey, in a sound sequence using the visual map as a guide.  At first they carry this out collectively as a class, then in smaller groups with four or five students to a group, recreating their own visual maps.
Mr Bolton's students enjoy the sound sequence they have re-created and decide they would like to present it as a performance to another class.
As criteria for asessment Mr Bolton takes anecdotal note recording his students' willingness to present their own work to an audience, their accuracy in representing the mapped sounds visually, their accuracy in representing the mapped sounds aurally.
In the process of reflection Mr Bolton and his students talk about the following questions:
What is sound? What is silence?  What do we usually mean by 'silence' (for example in a classroom - this is to encouraging an understanding of the relativity of silence to sound.  If you think your students capable of understanding the concept, discuss 'absolute silence'.  Does it exist?  What would it be like?)  Can sound and silence exist separately?
How much does where we hear sounds affect our hearing them? (soundscapes, echo, etc)
Would other people be able to tell where we had been if they heard our 'sound sequence' of sounds in our school grounds?  How could we organise the sounds on our list? (eg random, cultural, environmental, natural, noise)

Evaluation

Mr Bolton thinks about the following:

• Did his students generally enjoy the unit?
• Did they achieve the learning outcomes?
• Were the activities appropriate to this particular group?
• Do I need to incorporate more language activities to help students understand and talk about what they are doing?

Forward Planning

Mr Bolton asks himself 'Where do I go from here?'
He believes that either he and the class could proceed to the next lesson prepared in this sequence or explore with the class, another sound environment.  He is aware that this supports a school excursion in another subject area involving a visit to a reputedly noisy factory.  Although another teacher is conducting this Mr Bolton will encourage his students, in their collection of data for that subject, to also collect for further sound activities, in a way similar to that of this lesson.

3.    Working With Sounds Creatively

Description of the lesson

In this unit Mr Bolton and his class will examine the concept of 'same-different', a balance of which is fundamental to the effectiveness of a work of art, through discussion supported by examples, and by incorporating repetition and contrast in an original sound sequence.

Work Requirements

Mr Bolton expects that his students will undertake the following tasks

• listen to and then represent sounds and their properties as graphic symbols
• represent other sounds and their properties they know as graphic symbols
• arrange a sequence of sounds employing repetitive and contrasting themes.
• map and graphically represent the sound sequence using symbols to represent  sounds.
• engage in discussion within the class and smaller groups, and record in summary, as a paragraph journal entry their understandings of the unit

Assessment

Assessment will be based on students' active participation in the unit as an individual and in group activities, graphic score of sound sequences, and their participation in performance of sound sequences.

Teaching and learning strategies

For his focus question, written on the whiteboard, Mr Bolton asks 'What is it that makes a work of art seem complete and 'balanced'?'
He begins the lesson by asking his students to imagine a situation which he describes to introduce the concept of 'same' or repetition.  He is aware that some of the students in the class will understand what it is to live, up to the present time in their lives, in the same house. He will call on their experience as one response.
So he asks, 'How would it be if we spent the whole ninety years of our lives living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed every night, going to the same school, having the same teacher, then the same job and so on?'   Several students understand and respond by suggesting it would become boring.
Now he encourages the class to talk about what happens when there seems to be too much 'same' in an event to which there is much the same response, that it would be boring.  Then he asks what could be done to change such a situation to have a satisfactory outcome.
Now Mr Bolton asks them to imagine another situation to introduce the concept of 'different' or contrasted.  He knows that some students in the class have previously attended more than one school, a couple in different towns.  Again he calls on their experience as a response.
He asks 'How would it be if every single day we changed our home, the town we lived in, the school we went to, the job we went to for our whole ninety years of living?'  This time several students suggest it could become very confusing.  A girl uses the word 'disorienting' and Mr Bolton congratulates her.  A brief discussion about the notion of 'eastern' or 'alien' diverts them.  Mr Bolton talks for a moment about the first use of 'orient' to describe 'Arabia', as 'things and places in the east.'
He brings the discussion back by suggesting that this is appropriate as people found 'places eastern' a somewhat frightening, confusing idea, of difference.  They talk about what happens when there seems to be too much 'different' and what could be done satisfactorily to change such a situation.
They continue, discussing 'same' and 'different' around them.  Mr Bolton asks 'What is the same about specified things, activities and events such as the school year, or their classroom compared with the one next door.
As a shared task they decide to 'map' the school year as a chart, entering symbols to show whether a month is mostly holidays or mostly school.  They represent the holidays with somebody at play and school by a figure crouched over a desk.  Mr Bolton mentions that these are what we call CONCRETE symbols because they represent real things.  He says his students might want to choose to use ABSTRACT symbols, that either is acceptable.
For example your chart might look like this (where the circles represent holidays and the triangles, school):

Tension and Release    

Then Mr Bolton divides the class into two groups.  he makes group one responsible for 'Holidays' and  group two for  'School'.  Each group goes into a quick 'huddle' and chooses a sound, or sounds, to represent the holiday feeling.  Mr Bolton shows a student how to 'conduct' the mapped chart by moving with a pointer from left to right across it.  He tells the 'conductor that how fast or slow the Sound Sequence moves is over to whoever leads.  The class likes the way the sequence sounds and decides it will rehearse and perform this 'Sound Sequence' later.
Now in small groups, using butchers paper and textas, the students draw blank twelve square time charts similar to the one above.  Using symbols to represent events, they map an activity they have enjoyed recently.  Some map a game and a dance, others a fishing expedition and a bush walk.  Each group finds a space to rehearse their Sound Sequence in.  Although this is difficult because Mr Bolton is not prepared to let anybody go where he can't keep an eye on them, by carefully using corners of the room and verandah space outside he is able to allow most groups a satisfactory 'sound' space to rehearse their sequence in.
A representative of each group explains their group's Graphically Represented Sound Sequence to the remainder of the class followed by the group performing.  Mr Bolton asks the audience and each group to think about how many events they needed to represent as symbols,  which events happened more than once, which event happened most often, and which events happened only once in each 'piece'. 
This class performance of each group's sound sequence provides Mr Bolton with anecdotal information for assessment.

Assessment Criteria

Mr Bolton sees as assessment criteria the students' willingness to present their own work to an audience and student participation in the preparation and presentation of the work.
Mr Bolton and his students reflect on the lesson as they talk about the following questions:

• 'Do you think your group's mapped sequence of activities was effective - in other words did it 'work'?'
• 'If it was effective what made it 'work'?' 'Were the 'ingredients' in your  sound sequence 'recipe' balanced between 'same' and 'different'.  'How might we find the right balance?'
• 'Or, if it didn't seem to be effective why didn't it work?'  'Were 'same/different' balanced?'  'What, if anything, could you do to improve it?'

In evaluating the effectiveness of his lesson Mr Bolton asks himself the following questions;

• Did my students generally enjoy the unit?
• Did they achieve the learning outcomes?
• Were the activities appropriate to this particular group?
• Do I need to incorporate more language activities to help students understand and talk about what they are doing?

Forward Planning

In asking where might he go from here Mr Bolton decides this may be an opportunity to listen to music which has a balance of 'same' and 'different'.  He recalls from his own school days, that the Twelve Bar Blues, based on a pattern of 'same/different' Chord Sequences, is usually easy for students to follow.  He remembers too that any number of old rock 'n' roll numbers, particularly early Elvis Presley songs such as 'Hound Dog',  or 'Blue Seude Shoes' are based on this MUSICAL FORM.

He wonders, to himself, if it is stretching credibility to suggest a correlation between the twelve bar blues as a balanced mixture of 'same-different' and a balanced diet of activites of the twelve months of the year.  Compare, for example, our mapping of the school year with this graphic representation of the twelve bar blues, where the changes are Chord changes.
Finally he asks himself, 'How do I build on to what they have learned here?'
He looks for the 'same/different' theme in other arts and general curriculum areas.  As it is fundamental to our way of life it should appear in all sorts of seemingly unlikely places.