Curated OER
Critical Listening: Music Vocabulary
The school band or orchestra analyzes their own performance after exploring musical terminology. They listen to a classical piece and describe it using only words. They look up musical terminology and then use those words to compare and...
National Arts Centre
Create a Set Design
Groups create a set for a play or story they select, build a model, and share their stage with the class. The team explains the rationale for their choices and the mood they feel their staging creates.
Curated OER
Jazz Exploration: A Collage Project
Middle schoolers explore and experience jazz through collage. They listen to improvisational jazz, discuss the origins of jazz, then design and create a collage that shows jazz being played. This project will result in amazing works of...
Curated OER
Adapting a Musical
High schoolers transform literature into musical productions. In this integrated arts instructional activity, students discuss how musicals are written and produced. High schoolers then select literature they are familiar with to adapt...
Curated OER
Ensemble Rehearsal Critique
Learners discuss how to critique a musical piece properly. After listening to different types of music, they identify the strengths and weaknesses of the piece. They also develop solutions to the problems in the music for further...
Curated OER
Epic Improvisation
Really? Rapping The Odyssey? Really. A discussion of the oral tradition of story telling and its links to Epic poetry sets the stage for a series of activities that encourage improvisation to integrate music into other classrooms....
Curated OER
Israel
The class creates and performs a movement performance of the creation story found in the Jewish tradition. This lesson begins with the research of Israeli culture and culminates in a performance of the narrated creation story....
Curated OER
Writing a Music Review
Students compose a written music review of one of today's popular bluegrass musicians after they read online essays and journals about the modern bluegrass music scene look over and discuss recent music reviews
Curated OER
Ensemble Performance
Students sing or play music in order to complete a self-critique that performance. Working in ensemble groups, students practice and play a piece of music. Ensemble performances are recorded and each member's performance is critiqued...
Curated OER
Fifties/Sixties Musical Playwriting Workshop
Students write a coherent script based on characterization, theme, conflict and emotional tone as found in the songs' lyrics and develop an understanding of the enjoyment that comes through discipline and hard work leading toward a...
Orlando Shakes
West Side Story: Study Guide
Hey, enough frabbajabba about that stool pigeon, Daddy-O! Using the West Side Story study guide, scholars explore the language of the play and read about its historical associations and themes. Pupils also engage in a Spectrum of...
San Francisco Symphony
Instrument and Visual Appreciation of Art
There are a lot of great ideas to be found here. To better understand the connection between art and history, learners research several music and art pieces, then relate them to major social events. They study the lives and works...
Curated OER
Final Performance of a Play
Second graders study theatre by designing a play, studying actors, and work in partners to create a story to perform. For this theatre study lesson, 2nd graders discuss theatre as live theatre, television, film, and radio. Students act...
Curated OER
Cubism a Fractured Reality - Still Life With Collage Elements
Students gain an understanding and awareness for the cubist style of artists. They create a multi-media composition showing multiple views of various objects and a variety of textures.
Curated OER
Elements of Music
Students identify three of the essential elements of music: rhythm, melody and harmony. They discover a simple song which will illustrate these three elements separately and bring them together in a final form. They analyze and critique...
Curated OER
Sondheim: Secret Metaphors
High schoolers explore the work of Stephen Sondheim. In this musical theater lesson, students examine the musicals Merrily We Roll Along and Sunday in the Park with George. High schoolers identify and...
Curated OER
Sondheim: Voice of Cultural Change
High schoolers explore Stephen Sondheim's contributions to musical theatre in the context of the dramatic cultural shift that occurred in American life in the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
Curated OER
Pantomime vs. Abstract Gesture
Students explain dance as a way to create and communicate meaning and demonstrate the difference between pantomiming and abstracting a gesture.
Curated OER
Garage Band Introduction
Students create a new project. They are told that the Garage Band is a program that comes on Macintosh computers. Students are told that they project doesn't matter what tempo or key if they are recording live music. They go back to the...
Curated OER
Northwest Native American Art
Eighth graders first study the art of the U.S. Northwestern Coast Native American peoples. They select an image or make their own and make a drawing and then make a 6-inch linoleum block print.
Curated OER
Twelve-Bar Blues
Students examine blues music. In this music genres instructional activity, students discover details about the history of the musical genre and compositional techniques. Students then compose melodies of their own with 12-bar blues chord...
Curated OER
Music Box
Students work together to build a music box. They create figures that move when a song plays. They answer discussion questions to complete the lesson.
Curated OER
Recreating a Masterpiece
Students analyze and critique various artists and their work. They write research papers on artists and create reproductions of their works, reflecting their earlier critiques of the works.
Curated OER
The Element of Color
Eighth graders study and analyze the elements of color by creating an personalized color wheel. Emphasis is placed on constructive criticism of student work by others for assessment. Students create short poems for their color wheel...