Begin by emphasising that almost all music has a steady pulse which players have to feel and fit with. Practise as a class, either with or without instruments, playing a steady four beats per bar. Emphasise staying exactly together – not getting faster, not getting slower. Practise playing just the first beat of the bar. Practise quavers on a chosen beat of the bar, and so on.

On the board, draw 16 pulse circles in four groups of four. Fill in random pulse circles in the pattern described in the Percussion: Recipe sheet and shown below. Count through what you have written, playing the rhythm which has been created.

Give out the Percussion: Solo grid sheet to each pupil. On this sheet, there is room to compose three four-bar exercises. Pupils should fill in the pulse circles in the way you demonstrated on the board. They can then practise their own rhythms either using percussion instruments (noisy) or using the end of the index finger on the palm of the hand (quiet, but not so much fun). The first two composition exercises have four beats in a bar; the third allows pupils to choose how many beats they have in a bar. Recommend that they use three, five or six.

Pupils can write out their rhythms in traditional notation using the guidance on their grid sheets.

Organise the pupils into small groups of up to six. Give out the Percussion: Recipe sheet and the Percussion: Four-bar grid sheet to each group, so that every pupil in the class has a copy of each. At any stage, pupils can transcribe their music into traditional music notation. Some may prefer to work in traditional notation immediately. If this is so, ensure that other pupils in the group understand what is happening! You may also wish to distribute manuscript paper if this is the case.

A variety of percussion instruments should be given to each group. Pupils list the instruments they have in the first column on their sheet.

Each pupil chooses one instrument from the selection and writes a rhythm for that instrument on one of the rows in the grid. Explain to pupils that they should shade a dot on the sheet if a note is played, according to the instructions on the recipe sheet.

Pupils copy parts from each other so that they all end up with the complete music that their group has composed.

Ask pupils to practise their own parts. This can be done almost silently, by tapping lightly on the palm of the hand with the end of the index finger. Alternatively, pupils can practise on their instruments (noisy, but pupils will enjoy it!). If practice rooms are available then they can be used.

Eventually, pupils can play in their groups and perform to the class. The compositions can be played in various arrangements decided by the pupils.

Discuss the various elements which can be applied, especially the use of dynamics, pace, timbre, texture and so on. Using the Percussion: Structure sheet, pupils can work out the overall outline of their piece by deciding exactly who will play when, even though they have only composed four bars of music. If pupils have composed different percussion rhythms, this can be recorded on this sheet as well. You may wish to ask pupils to write their music out as traditional notation at this point.