Center for Civic Education
The Power of Nonviolence: Music Can Change the World
Here is a fantastic activity through which class members discover how music has the ability to influence others in a meaningful way. After reviewing selected pieces and modern-day protest songs, learners will research other songs that...
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Using Harmonic Vision’s Music Ace Software to Reinforce Basic Music Skills
If you have access to Harmonic Vision’s Music Ace Software, then this lesson could work for you. Kindergarteners use the video music software to place, identify, and read musical notes. They listen in and identify both high and low...
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Dance Showing Science Contexts of Movement: States of Matter
Fifth graders dance in different ways to show movement of states of matter. In this matter lesson plan, 5th graders make connected shapes with a partner, make flowing movements, travel rapidly, and more.
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Adapting a Musical
Students transform literature into musical productions. In this integrated arts lesson, students discuss how musicals are written and produced. Students then select literature they are familiar with to adapt into musical productions.
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Form and Observation
Use a familiar song and adorable baby animal pictures to teach youngsters about genetic variation. Begin by listening to "Twelve Variations on 'Ah vous dirai-je Maman,'" which you will need to find online (there are several versions...
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Connecting Literature, Writing and Music
Students assess the impact of music to portray emotions and tell stories. Examples are taken from the life of Rosa Parks and a piece of band music called "A Movement for Rosa". Evaluation is accomplished through in-class participation...
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Rhythmic Movement Skills
Students explore rhythmic movements. In this performing arts lesson, students create their own movements and then repeat the each others movement. Finally, students create movements to the Haiku generated by the entire class.
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Flip and Flop: An Adaptation Through Dancing Echoes with Shapes and Locomotor Movement
Dancers practice echoing through dance. They listen to a story "Flip and Flop" and then are put into pairs. One partner is Flip, while the other is Flop. Flip creates a shape by dancing, and Flop, the other student, echoes that shape by...
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Movement Adventure
Students discover movement and pantomime techniques in this adventurous story telling experience for kindergarten. Assessment is done through a short question and answer session and students drawing the "adventure".
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Linear and Locomotor Movements
Students develop locomotor movements. In this dance movement activity, students identify lines and develop creativity while performing to "Cha Cha Slide". Students discuss how to create dances and difficulty of movements.
John F. Kennedy Center
Jazz music, Dance and Poetry
Students view video and become familiar with the type of movement in jazz dance. In this jazz dance lesson, students write a cinquain about jazz dance. Students recognize the elements of jazz dance and the type of music associated with...
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High and Low Tones
Students perform movements to trigger high and low tones in music produced by percussionists.
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Animal Movement
Young scholars participate in a movement to music activity. In this awareness of movement lesson, students hear music and move like animals they hear described in the music. Young scholars make disciplined movements and make sounds like...
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Dance and Math
Second graders examine human body movements by measuring the choreography of a dance. In this physical education instructional activity, 2nd graders participate in a creative dance which is based on specific movements of each limb,...
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Moving to a Path Map
Students accurately demonstrate non-locomotor/axial movements such as bend, twist, stretch, swing. They accurately demonstrate eight basic locomotor movements.
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How Music Motivates
Students form conclusions regarding the motivational effects of music on the mind during the Civil Rights era. In this Civil Rights movement instructional activity, students describe how music motivates, describe the motivational role in...
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Poetry/Music: Let It Snow!
Students create poems and sound compositions using instruments, sounds, and pictograph notation. After listening Debussy's Children's corner suite, they brainstorm a list of snow vocabulary words. Students write poems and in groups...
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Labeling the Body
First graders sing about their body. In this music lesson students sing the songs "I Shake My Thumb" and "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes". After they sing the songs and add different body parts to extend the songs they label a picture...
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Kye Kye Kule
Third graders study the repeating patterns and basic dance movements used in traditional African drumming songs. In groups, they create a story that can be used with a ritual/tradition and a rhythmic piece that uses repeating rhythmic...
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Elvis
For this excellent music and history lesson, 1st graders watch movies and listen to music sung by Elvis Presley, then draw and write as if they were a famous singer. This entertaining and inventive lesson has a terrific assessment...
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Music and Movement
Students demonstrate how to instruct a Pre-K class in singing and creative movement. Once they are grouped according to several nursery rhymes, they practice singing the songs and coordinating appropriate movements with the rhythm. The...
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"Jazz is About Freedom": Billie Holiday's Anti-lynching Song Strange Fruit
Working in small teams, learners analyze a variety of primary source materials related to lynching (news articles, letters written to or written by prominent Americans, pamphlets, broadsides, etc.) in order to assess the effectiveness of...
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The Pony Song
Students sing "Three Little Pigs", the "Pony Song", and "The Animal Blues" in this elementary school music lesson. National and State Standards are addressed. Assessment rubric is included for grading and student evaluation.
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Changing Energy: Landforms and Dance
Third graders choreograph a dance to represent the changes in nature. In this dance and nature lesson plan, 3rd graders use sharp quick movements to demonstrate changes.