Music Genres Teacher Resources

Jazz, folk, hip-hop. Classical music, opera, instrumental. The list of genres just keeps getting longer. And just as the list has expanded, so has the appreciation of the joys of music expanded beyond the walls of the visual and performing arts classroom. Lesson Planet provides a wealth of reviewed and rated lesson and unit plans, activities, worksheets, interactives, and articles that offer suggestions for how to infuse the study of music into any discipline.

Teacher resources suggest how instructors can use primary source materials to incorporate jazz into history classes.  A newspaper article on how Hurricane Katrina impacted the jazz scene in New Orleans leads to a research project that asks students to examine how the sounds of music reflect the culture and the time period in which it is created. Project-based learning gets a boost from an activity that engages class members in designing a music theme park with lands that represent various music genres.

Language arts classes look at the poetic elements in lyrics, the rhythms and rhymes in hip-hop and the ways music contributed to the vast social changes of the 1960’s. Lesson Planet also offers resource projects for learners and their families that will keep them engage over the summer.

A whole new world awaits.