Once students have tried composing music using the Creative Explorer music activity, encourage them to think about lyrics also.

Maree says she gets her ideas for songs from all sorts of places and writes songs to express herself when she feels strongly about something. For example, thinking about traditions seems to be the starter idea for "Past to the Present"; being free to make positive choices led to "To Be Free"; and cultural and personal relationships formed the foundation for "Fatally Cool".

Ideas for song words that express feelings are infinite in number. Help your students to pick a starter idea that they have strong feelings about. For instance:

• compassion for another person or for an animal;
• true love;
• the generation gap;
• racial harmony;
• individual rights;
• being true to yourself; or
• being part of a team.

Encourage students to find a relaxed environment with their notebook and pen, and, starting with their key word or topic, to draft some lyrics. Once they have an initial draft, help them to work on refining the lyrics, in terms of both wording and ideas.

This activity allows you to make links with the writing activity on Creative Explorer and to get students thinking about how they can integrate the various art forms they discover. For instance, the writing activity gives students the opportunity to rewrite Patricia Grace and Robin Kahukiwa's book, The Kuia and the Spider. Your students may want to have another try at Maree Sheehan's music activity and create a piece of music that would sound good matched with the story they write in the writing activity. The music that they have written may make them think of a story, or they may already have a story in mind that would sound good set to this music.

Curriculum Links
The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum (Draft) describes four strands within the discipline of music. These are Learning the Languages of Music, Developing Ideas in Music, Communicating and Interpreting Meaning in Music, and Understanding Music in Context. By learning about musicians and musical practice in New Zealand, and by experimenting with making music in the activity provided, Creative Explorer can be used to meet a number of achievement objectives at levels 3 and 4 of this curriculum statement.