If there is one thing my students learn before they leave me to move onto the next teacher, it’s the BME Rule. I have a sign in my classroom that states: “The BME Rule – All Good Writing is Following It!”
It has to do with the fact that all good pieces of writing have a beginning, a middle and an end. But in my class, students get this concept drilled into their heads as we listen to music each day during our Active Listening time. When I talk about the BME Rule, I always mention music. Like this:
“All good pieces of writing (and music!) follow the BME Rule!”
And it’s true! Music is a composition that needs to be pleasing to the human ear, just as a story, an article or a poem needs to be as well. Our brains love organization and even the most abstract piece of music will still have some B, M and E!
If you listen to any piece of music, you can find its beginning, middle and end. Sometime the beginning may be short and the ending can be abrupt, but they are there just the same. Paralleling the BME in music to the stories, reports and poems we write can be yet another effective way to show students an important aspect of good writing.
And you can take it further too. Ask students what makes a good beginning, middle and end in a piece of music:
B – Does it grab the listener’s attention? Does it introduce anything? (instruments/character, themes, forshadowing)
M – Does it have details? (layers of sound) Does it tell a story? (with various themes or lyrics)
E – Is it exciting/subdued/abrupt? Why and what does that do for the listener? Does the ending wrap things up? How? Does it bring back a familiar theme (ABA form) or introduce something somewhat new (coda)?
For some great songs you can use in your own classroom for BME and other Active Listening activities and lessons, view my set of public playlists on Spotify!
~EMP
Celebrate Music and Literacy by taking advantage of Elizabeth’s book Inspired by Listening, a teacher resource book for integrating musical listening experiences into the classroom.
Love the sign idea …. I might need to make one too!
BME was something I always taught and stressed when I was teaching writing. We would look at books (especially ones we read aloud as a whole class) to see what things we could find in the BME that we really liked or even wanted to “copy” some of those ideas. I had examples of good B, good M, and good E to share so students knew what to look for. Thanks for sharing another GREAT idea!
On your BME rules, my screen did not show the list of songs you had listed at the end. Could you share them with me?
I’m sorry that the player doesn’t always work. I’m not sure why the embed code doesn’t work all the time. Here is a direct link to the playlist. I’d be interested to find out if you can access Grooveshark at your school. (assuming you are a teacher;) )
http://grooveshark.com/#!/playlist/BME/50600610
Enjoy!
Hello Ms. Peterson, I tried clicking the link in your response and I could not access Grooveshark either. I’m not using the school server so I’m not sure why it’s not accessible.
Thank you for the comment, Mary! Grooveshark is no longer around. 🙁 I now use Spotify. Here is a link to all my public Spotify playlists: https://open.spotify.com/user/pn7ew1e9qy76h6lyth6kc94dx
Enjoy!
Elizabeth