This instructional plan will take an instrumental ensemble through the process of learning or improving their ability to follow the conductor. This process will include demonstrating different conducting patterns and playing as an ensemble in response to the conductor’s gestures.

Students will explore copyright and intellectual property standards as they relate to music, music technology, and digital citizenship. Students will identify and apply their knowledge of copyright law and licensure to select appropriate licenses for an original work. Students will then analyze copyrighted material and understand how to obtain appropriate permission to use the material.

Students will investigate ways that choral music can influence the community. Using project-based learning, students will research organizations in their community to be the beneficiary of a benefit-type concert. Students will select level-appropriate repertoire and create advertising. This project is imagined to be used for collaborative small groups, but could be adapted to work as an individual project.

This plan will allow percussion students the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of how to properly hold a drumstick and approach the drum. The teacher will be able to model exactly what the students describe, resulting in classroom discussion and a pedagogical experience.

In this lesson, students will use a recording platform to layer tracks and produce a small ensemble piece as the only performer. This process encourages individual accountability and emphasizes the importance of ensemble performance skills.

Students will explore copyright and intellectual property standards as they relate to music, music technology, and digital citizenship. Students will apply their understanding of copyright law to complete the copyright process for an original work. Students will further apply their understanding by participating in a class debate about real-world copyright issues raised by a song that sets original lyrics to an older song.

Instrumental students will learn strategies and skills to effectively perform with dynamic balance as an instrumental ensemble. Students will experience and execute various exercises to achieve balance as a trio, section, instrument family, and full ensemble.

This plan will provide the instructor with an outline and resources to direct students through a variety of listening exercises.  Students can use listening exercises to analyze music, identify important elements, and critique performances.

This plan provides teachers with the resources to guide students through the analysis of musical time periods which will provide insight into history with a lens through the fine arts.  This analysis helps students make connections with contemporaries and world events, in turn, enabling students to perform music with greater depth and style.

Students will learn about history and music history through listening, analyzing, and performing works in their instrumental class. Students will gain insight into history through a Fine Arts lens, enabling them to make connections with contemporaries and world events. 

This plan will outline the process and resources needed to introduce and improve improvisation in an instrumental classroom. Improvisation is important for encouraging creativity and expression while providing a supportive environment that is free of judgment and criticism. 

This plan outlines an approach for implementing an approachable stick control exercise for percussionists performing on snare, mallets, and timpani. Additionally, it includes strategies to integrate percussionists into most concert wind warm-up sessions (using duple subdivision). The plan also includes ideas on including auxiliary/accessory percussion.

Students will identify basic parts of the ukulele and learn to sing and play a simple folk song utilizing the C major chord with proper strumming technique.

This plan is designed to reinforce students’ ability to recognize and apply whole step/half step patterns to the guitar and foster a deeper understanding of how pitches are organized on the guitar fretboard. Understanding the whole step/half step concept and the ability to apply it are important precursors to successful sight reading and navigation of the fretboard.

This instructional plan provides the teacher with an outline and resources to guide music students through the process of selecting and pursuing a career path in the 21st century workplace, enabling students to understand music as a field of knowledge.

Students will identify, define and use basic standard and instrument specific notation for pitch with a focus on fluency. The objective of Note Reading Olympics is to assess and improve note reading skills. Students aim to identify as many notes as possible in 60 seconds. Students are able to achieve four levels based on difficulty: Olympic Trials, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Olympic Legend. The resources in this document are specifically designed for orchestra, but the lesson could be adapted for any music discipline.

In this plan, students will research, discuss, and present ways in which music was used to effect change during various historical periods or events. This particular plan will use the American Civil Rights Movement, South African Apartheid, America’s participation in Vietnam, and current events as examples.

Students will demonstrate the creative process by composing an eight-measure composition using the E major pentatonic scale. Notes used include B and C# on the 2nd string and E, F#, and G# on the 1st string. These melody notes will be played using the index and middle finger. Warm-ups and repertoire to prepare students in the key and compositional style are included as resources.

In this lesson, students will learn to identify different note and rest values and how these come together to form short rhythmic patterns. Students will perform rhythmic patterns on their selected instrument using the ‘Rhythm Randomizer’ tool.

Students will record themselves and use a provided rubric to evaluate growth in their playing. This lesson can be used with individual or ensemble performances.