Students will engage in active listening to Yoko Shimomura’s “Dark Star Battle” from the video game Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. The students will discover key elements to the composition and explore those elements through composition using Orff instruments.

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.

This plan will introduce students to a clear and consistent method for practicing and performing sight reading. Students will evaluate and assess sight reading of their peers and gain experience in listening and error detection.

Students will demonstrate knowledge of rhythmic literacy by playing Disappearing Rhythms. Students will identify and perform simple rhythms, and improve audition skills, as well as accuracy and fluency of rhythmic music literacy, through repetition in a fast-paced environment.

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.

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.