Students learn how classical music and art combine to make an exciting tool for creative write and art expression. Students will develop the skill to write more expressively using descriptive words and phrases such as adjectives, adverbs, metaphors, and similes in order to make their writing come alive, and be more visual and engaging.

Students will learn about the emergence of bootlegs, also known as 'mash-ups' (the combination of two songs into one), on the Internet. By researching the musical origins of songs and creating and performing their own bootlegs, students will discover how different music styles borrow from and influence one another.

In this activity, students will connect the idea behind a choral piece - change - with its musical characteristics, using appropriate musical terminology such as rhythm, tempo, and dynamics. They will then work in groups to create short pieces that express similar feelings.

Students will learn to recognize a five-tone scale. Students will sing or perform known American folksongs together in class. Advanced students will be able to identify all five pitches and even discern the actual pentatonic scale being used.

Students closely examine chamber music as it has changed from the Middle Ages to today. Students will work in small groups to research the composers, instruments and typical presentation of chamber music in five distinct time periods, and then individually write biographies of composers from their assigned era. Each group will create an interesting and informative display of their epoch and biographies, which they will present in a future class.

This music lesson plan allows students to closely examine chamber music as it has changed from the Middle Ages to today. Students will work in small groups to research the composers, instruments and typical presentation of chamber music in five distinct time periods, and then individually write biographies of composers from their assigned era. Each group will create an interesting and informative display of their epoch and biographies, which they will present in a future class.

This resource is the article which is part of the lesson from the New York Times lesson of the same name.

This lesson examines both the content and form of lyrics in blues songs. In addition to highlighting the basic musical form of a blues song, it also addresses the use of floating verses in blues music, both within the context of the original era in which the songs were sung and also in relation to how this practice is perceived today.

This lesson focuses on the music through which those hardships were expressed and on the daily lives of southern blacks in the sharecropping era. It is structured around an imagined road trip through Mississippi. Students will "stop" in two places: Yazoo City, where they will learn about the sorts of natural disasters that periodically devastated already-struggling poor southerners, and Hillhouse, where they will learn about the institution of sharecropping. They will study a particular Country Blues song at each "stop" and examine it as a window onto the socioeconomic conditions of the people who created it. Students will create a scrapbook of their journey, in which they will record and analyze what they have learned about the difficulty of eking out a living in the age of sharecropping.

In this lesson, students will examine the history and popularity of "We Shall Overcome" and investigate six additional songs from different musical genres that reveal the impact of the Civil Rights movement. These are: Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," a poignant Blues song depicting the horrors of lynching; Bob Dylan's "Oxford Town," a Folk song about protests after the integration of the University of Mississippi; John Coltrane's "Alabama," an instrumental Jazz recording made in response to the September 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four African-American girls; Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam," a response to the same church bombing as well as the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in Mississippi; Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," a Soul song written after Cooke's arrest for attempting to check in to a whites-only motel in Shreveport, Louisiana; and Odetta's "Oh Freedom," a spiritual that Odetta performed at the 1963 March on Washington.

Students will listen to Music for the Royal Fireworks by George Frideric Handel (commissioned to celebrate the signed Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1749) and design a virtual fireworks display to accompany the music. Students will learn that the specific colors in a firework display are created when atoms of a particular element or a combination of elements are energized by the firework's heat. They will learn that the shape of the firework display is determined by the shape and structure of one particular component inside the firework shell. They will discover that each component of a firework has a role in the timing, sound, and visual display that make up a firework, and how to coordinate the fireworks display with a musical tract.

Students will engage with the mariachi music of Mexico through discussing audio and video clips, listening to individual instruments within the ensemble and imitating them by ear, and through playing an arranged mariachi piece. Extensions can lead to analysis of formal elements within the music, further study of the culture from which this music originates, or contact with culture-bearing mariachi musicians.

This is REMIX  with adding accessibility by headers and organize by numbers.These activities provide students with a way to explore the Christmas Truce of 1914 through multiple media. It lends itself to the exploration of many themes: War, Peace, Kindness, Globalism, Humanity. The discussion questions suggested here focus on the universality of the human experience. Although it uses a picture book as the anchor text, the activities could be used in middle and high school as well. The timing is flexible depending on the use of the discussion questions and how many tasks you choose to do.

Through this writing activity students will explore how Aaron Copland uses music to convey a sense of landscape and time.

This lesson takes advantage of students' interest in music and audio sharing as part of a persuasive debate unit. Students investigate the controversial topic of downloading music from the Internet. They draw upon their prior knowledge and experience by discussing their own sources of music and Internet practices, then conduct internet research to investigate the history and legal issues of copyright infringement.

Students will be introduced to and develop a basic understanding of copyright laws. They will identify musical examples of copyright infringement.

Students will create song lists, artwork, and liner notes for an original soundtrack reflecting their experiences, opinions, and perceptions of the world around them.

In this lesson, students learn about the Mirembe Kawomera Coffee Cooperative in Uganda, a movement designed to promote the sale of Ugandan coffe, and also to unite several culture groups, including Christians and Muslims, to promote a common cause of world peace. Students will explore the music found on the album created by members of the co-op.

In this lesson, students work in cooperative groups to create a "ditty" to teach the characteristics that distinguish literary forms to younger students. The ditty is performed before the class.

Students research the life and influence of musician James Brown on musical, political and cultural history. They then produce a podcast to share their knowledge with classmates.