The musical form call and response has roots in West Africa and acts as a form of communication and participation in music. In this lesson, students will participate in performance, composition, and listening activities on call and response form using music from Ghana.

Students will use a folk song to explore improvisation using a variety of singing, body percussion, and musical instruments.

In this lesson, students respond to music in triple meter and discover facts about the famous Japanese film music composer, Joe Hisaishi. Literary connections and global music concepts are also explored through the picture book The Sound of Silence by Katrina Goldsaito.

Students will learn a song about the seven simple machines. Students will collaborate to use three simple machines to create their own inventions. They will perform and demonstrate what their inventions will look like using body movements. Students will then have time to reflect on their inventions, how they can be used, and illustrate them on paper.

Students will learn or review the concept of tempo and the appropriate music terminology associated with it. They will show understanding by discussing tempo changes in music, moving their bodies to different tempos, and coding Ozobots to move at different tempos.

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. 

Students will use their creative writing power to explore what a composer/performer might have been trying to say or make their audience feel in a piece of music. Students will use creative writing prompts to explore musical elements, using appropriate music terminology.

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. 

Students select an instrument and identify instrument’s origins, composers and musicians who feature this instrument, and styles of music where this instrument is featured. Students will also identify the parts and sound science of the instrument. 

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.

Students will explore and identify the basics of melodic direction using aural skills and body percussion or movement. Students will compose their own piece of digital music using stepwise and leapwise melodic direction.

Students will compose short melodic phrases using commonly found household items, such as a rock to create “Melodies that Rock.” Students will explore music contour in relationship to high and low notes, and melodic patterns and motion.

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.

The music room just became a working professional music studio and live performance venue, complete with a full complement of composers, performers, audio engineers, promoters, stage managers, and a stage crew! Students will work collaboratively to develop understandings of the many careers associated with the performing arts, while composing and premiering an original music work.