Baker Demonstration’s Fall 2025 Music Club
— Overture Games•Lead Teacher: Chelsi Miller
When Baker Kids Became Composers
Week One: Breaking the Ceiling
On the first day of Overture Club at Baker Demonstration School, the students weren’t even in the music room. They’d been moved to a regular classroom, which stung a little—but Chelsi Miller set up anyway and started with rhythm challenge videos, the whole class clapping and tapping out patterns together.
By week two, something clicked during Beat Decoders, a game where students identify rhythm patterns in music.
The kids earned thirty achievements. Out of sixteen possible.
30/16 achievements! Chelsi wrote, exclamation point and all.
They didn’t just meet expectations. They found a way to exceed what was supposed to be possible.
That’s the thing about giving kids tools to explore: sometimes they go further than you planned.
Week Four: When a Student Became the Teacher
In week four, Chelsi tried something different. Instead of jumping straight to tablets, the group started with Rocket Race as a class—three teams competing to identify musical concepts together.
The energy was focused. Students were listening to each other, not just the game.
Then one student asked if they could lead a Kahoot, a music trivia game they’d found.
Chelsi said yes.
The student who asked wasn’t the teacher’s pet or the most advanced musician. They just wanted to share something they’d discovered, and Chelsi recognized that teaching moment.
By the end of class, students were asking where different buttons were on the interface, trying to access their music collection and dig deeper into the system.
She gave that day a 10 out of 10.
Week Seven: The K‑pop Pack Drop
When the highly anticipated K‑pop character packs dropped, Chelsi knew exactly what was about to happen.
Today I was a bank! Hah, she wrote.
She made sure every student had chances to earn rewards through activities like Tune Testers, Step, Skip or Repeat as a class, and composing in Melopedes. The motivation was real—they wanted those packs.
But here’s what mattered: to get there, they had to actually do the music. They had to identify melody patterns. They had to create compositions. They had to understand how notes move in relation to each other: does the melody step up one note, skip over a note, or repeat?
Students loved opening K‑pop packs, Chelsi reported.
The joy wasn’t just about unlocking something new. It was about earning it by making music.
And then came the moment that kept happening throughout the semester.
Students enjoyed listening back to their tracks, Chelsi wrote.
Kids hit play on something they’d built from nothing, hearing their own musical ideas come to life. Not following sheet music. Not copying a teacher. Creating something original that didn’t exist before.
Week Nine: They Couldn’t Stop Playing
By week nine, React Attack had become the class favorite. In the game, students listen to music and identify when sections change, learning how songs are structured.
Most pop songs follow an ABA pattern: verse, chorus, verse. Once you understand this, you start hearing it everywhere.
Students love this game, Chelsi wrote.
They played through all the rounds, learning to hear when music shifts from one idea to another.
Then they immediately asked to play again.
The game was buggy. Logging back in didn’t always work. Votes wouldn’t always display correctly.
They didn’t care. They’d found something that helped them understand how music is built, and they wanted more of it anyway.
Technical failure didn’t diminish their enthusiasm.
Week Eleven: The Kid Who Surprised Everyone
In week eleven, Jeremy Weinstein subbed in for Chelsi. After a lesson on dynamics, he let students compose freely using different tools.
Phillip dove deep.
This was the same Phillip who had tried to convince Jeremy that the regular teacher gave out astronomical amounts of rewards for the smallest tasks—and whose classmates immediately fact‑checked him for fibbing.
Given time to create, Phillip became one of the most engaged composers in the room.
Sometimes the kid who pushes back the hardest is the one who cares the most.
What Actually Changed
Over eleven weeks, Baker students went from clapping along to YouTube videos to composing their own music.
They learned how to identify rhythm patterns—somehow earning 30 out of 16 possible achievements. They learned the difference between major and minor harmonies. They learned how melodies move and how songs are structured.
Most importantly, they stopped being just listeners and became creators.
By week seven, when the K‑pop packs dropped, the excitement wasn’t just about unlocking characters. It was about what they’d learned to earn them: the melody patterns they could now identify, the compositions they’d created, and the musical concepts they’d mastered.
One student led a Kahoot for the whole class because they wanted to share what they’d learned. Another broke past the achievement ceiling because the game couldn’t contain what they’d figured out. Phillip, the kid who once tried to game the system, ended up lost in composition when given the freedom to create.
Perfect conditions aren’t required for learning to happen. Sometimes you just need kids who want to make something, teachers who pay attention to what’s working, and enough time to let music happen.
