‘The things you love’: Montreal students create new stress-free song
It’s catchy, it’s new, and it’s stress-free! Grade six students from Montreal’s Carlyle Elementary School created a song titled: “The things you love.”And you’ll certainly love it — they wrote all the lyrics and the melodies as part of their IB exhibition project.
“I find music is very powerful tool of like spreading a message,” said grade six student, Merlin De Toureill. “My favorite part about creating this song was deciding the melody and getting in teams to choose everything,” he added. “Experimenting with all kinds of different instruments and just learning about each other.” This is the sixth song Carlyle Elementary School Music Teacher, Christine Crawford, created with grade six students. In the past students have sung about peace, climate change – and this year:“It’s a great way to overcome your stresses and we give our own ideas on how you could overcome them,” explained student, Elania Santelli. “But you could do however way you like and however way suits you best.”
From the anxiety about upcoming math tests or even stresses they might experience at home, the students wanted to share a stress-free and catchy song with the world. The tune took over two months to put together – from narrowing down four pages of lyrics they wrote to filming a music video.
“What’s the most impressive is to start from nothing with them and to just see that song being built step by step,” said Crawford.
“Seeing also my students in the creative process,” she added. “It’s mind-blowing what these kids can come up with.”
All their hard work even earned themselves the Junior prize in the “Tune Up” song writing contest of the Coalition of Music Education Canada.
“I really love the message and the lyrics just because of how much effort went into them,” explained De Toureill. “And how much I got to learn about my classmates and friends.”“All the sixth graders like put their own ideas in,” added Santelli. “We all came up with a very beautiful song.”
