DSOKids is the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s magical doorway to a world of musical fun and learning for students, parents and teachers. The site’s mission is to provide attractive, accessible and child-friendly resources that introduce symphonic music, the orchestra and its instruments, and to encourage both adults and young people to explore the world of the symphony orchestra.

Immerse yourself in the lively mood of Samba and Carimbo. Learn the basic steps and dance along with the music. Identify the instruments and play along with others. Learn about the relationships of Samba and Carimbo with other musics such as jazz and swing.

After gaining familiarity with the lives and music of Aaron Copland and Duke Ellington, students are asked to write a letter to these composers, expressing an understanding of how the history and culture of one"™s life can be reflected in a composer"™s music. Students also create a bio-poem to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the composer"™s thoughts and feelings about his life and music.

This curricular unit introduces some difang yinyue (regional music of China) and encourages children to discover characteristics of Chinese music by "travelling" around the eastern region of this country.

Students are introduced to equivalent fractions. Then, students make and use equivalent fraction/musical note tablets to assist them in adding fractions with like and unlike denominators

Students will be introduced to the great jazz composer and band leader, Duke Ellington by listening to his re-composed and re-orchestrated version of Nutcracker Suite by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Students will be passively introduced to the music of Duke Ellington with the goal that students recognize similar melodies in his work to those of Tchaikovsky. Students will learn about jazz instruments and connections will be made to literature, social studies, music and writing.

Students will become familiar with the cultural and historical implications of Early Jazz through listening to and analyzing music of the time while drawing conclusion upon visual, literary, and musical sources.

Students are invited to sight-read (solfege), play recorder, listen critically, and create, all in exploration of traditional German children's songs. They take a further step in comparing these new songs to American children's songs with which they may be familiar.

Students will larn about a time in the past when three famous people- Igor Stravinsky, George Balanchine and John Ringling, Jr. - joined forces to create a ballet for ballerinas the size of battleships. Students will listen and move to Stravinsky's Circus Polka: For a Young Elephant, written for the ballet that featured fifty ballet dancers and fifty elephants. Students will hear the story, Ballet of the Elephants, and learn about the men who worked together to make it happen.

Students will learn to focus and listen to music and begin to recognize the musical elements of dynamics and tempo. Students will learn to discuss the emotions that music can portray and evoke with a writing activity to allow students to brainstorm ideas of what they hear.

Students will become familiar with the cultural and historical implications of the Swing Era through listening to and analyzing music of the time while drawing conclusion upon visual, literary, and musical sources.

Students will learn about how the fandango community celebration is central to the Son Jarocho tradition of Veracruz, Mexico. This lesson explores the core elements of the fandango: instruments, voice and verse, and rhythmic dance.

While studying ecosystems, students will focus on the changes that occur in deciduous forest throughout the seasons. With that knowledge, they will listen to and analyze Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. As a culminating activity, students will use oil pastels to show what a deciduous forest would look like during each season.

Students will listen to and play Russian music, with an emphasis on the balalaika and accordion. They will also play "Tachanka", a Russian folk tune, in parts.

Students will select items from a simulated landfill in the school gym to use in building an instrument from recycled materials through a group relay race. Students will glean the knowledge they gained by viewing the "Landfill Harmonic" clip, studying a link explaining the “Engineering Design and Building Process” as well as reviewing the link “How Instruments Work” about the size and shape of an instrument and how it affects the sound. Class discussion on this sound production of traditional instruments will be valuable in the students' building process. Groups will lastly collaborate to create a poster and write a script for their presentation showing how they built their instrument from recycled materials. This lesson was developed by Angela Windley as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.

Students will re-watch the video clip from “Landfill Harmonic” as watched in the first lesson and will re-evaluate their feelings regarding poverty in their music journals. Students will initially meet in pairs for the discussion, then they will gather in their small groups for discussion about how the story of the members of the Landfill Harmonic has affected their perspective on poverty around the world including the local community. Students will create a group observation statement from their journal entries and discussion which will be read during the presentation. This lesson was developed by Angela Windley as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.

Through the video clip from "Landfill Harmonic", students will learn about poverty in Paraguay and how their community used items from a landfill to create instruments. This provided opportunities for their children to be involved in an orchestra and rise above their poverty-stricken life.Students will also hear a story “My Visit to a Mexican Landfill” that will enlighten them to poverty in other parts of the world. They will answer four specific questions about living in poverty. They will review characteristics of instrument families (Strings, Percussion, Brass, and Woodwind) as well as brainstorm about creative ways instruments can be made with recycled materials and which items could be used. This lesson was developed by Angela Windley as part of their completion of the North Carolina Global Educator Digital Badge program. This lesson plan has been vetted at the local and state level for standards alignment, Global Education focus, and content accuracy.

Students will be introduced to the music of India with a focus on introductory terminology, elemental concepts, and instrument identification through various singing, listening and playing opportunities.

Students will discuss emotion words. They will look up synonyms for emotion words. They will then listen
to the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and discuss the emotions they hear. Discussion about
instrument families and dynamics will take place to help students decide why the song gives certain
emotions. After several times listening to the music students will create a graph of the emotions they hear in
the music.

Students can use music to read each other"™s minds! As students learn to differentiate tempo and dynamics to interpret the mood of the music, they will express it through physical movement that allows their classmates to guess what is on their mind.