In 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...

Students explore, listen to and analyze songs that helped define rock and roll music. They read and discuss the article, "They're All Oldies, Dad Included." Research on contemporary artists is conducted and then the students choose who...

Introduce young learners to the read-aloud process with a short biographical passage about Ray Charles. After listening to the passage, class members respond to factual, inferential, and evaluative questions, and then create a timeline...

Plants prefer classical music to rock and roll. That's one of the claims in an informational passage that makes up part of a set of standardized assessment questions. The set is part of a larger collection of English language arts tests...

Students examine influences on the creation and development of music.

Eleventh graders examine political, cultural, and social movements through music. In this 1960s American history lesson plan, 11th graders explore the music of the decade in order to better understand the complexity of the time period....

Students explore protest songs. In this interdisciplinary instructional activity, students examine issues-based music by summarizing lyrics and revealing inferences, generalizations, conclusions, and points of view found in the songs.

Here is a great example of the type of biographical presentation your class could create. They can view this informational biography of John Lennon to learn about a famous person or as inspiration for a research project. Each slide...

Students explore the consequences of unemployment. In this macroeconomics lesson, students listen to the songs “Johnny 99” and “Worried Man.” Students discuss the socioeconomic costs of unemployment as they analyze the songs.

Students examine female artists who perform in the genres of rhythm & blues, jazz, soul, and hip-hop/rap. They compose lyrics and melody in one of these genres.

Henry David Thoreau and Linda Ronstadt? Ann Tyler and Pete Townshend? Joyce Carol Oates and Pearl Jam? This richly detailed plan pairs classic literature with contemporary music and asks learners to analyze how the theme of conformity is...

All you need is love! Find out how The Beatles met, what they recorded, and when they broke up. This resource could be a good way to set the stage or build a context for society in the 1960's and 70's, or as part of a music history lesson.

Students, while listening to upbeat music playing in the background, are introduced to six different exercises: push ups, curl ups, jumping jacks, squat thrusts, windmills, and leg lifts. They participate in a game called Fitness Gamble.

So what about those Beastie Boys? Kids read a New York Times article relating the history of hip-hop and rap icons the Beastie Boys. They then answer eleven who, what, when, where, and why questions about the text they read.

Students examine technological advancements in music and broadcast over the decades.

Eleventh graders discover the thematic connections between classical literary and popular song lyrics.  In this English lesson, 11th graders research a specific topic to be presented to the class.  Students analyze song lyrics...

Students examine classical music and the "Art Rock" of 1967. They review classical themes in their original genre and discuss/analyze how pop musicians incorporate theses themes into a variety of pop music genres.

B.B. King and Muddy Waters are two of the most famous blues performers of all time. In this music lesson plan, middle schoolers study the early careers and lasting musical contributions of both artists, each of whom carried the blues on...

Students analyze the movement of the blues from rural Mississippi to urban Chicago and how place and the environment affected the development of the blues. They define the blues, where it originated and how and why it moved to Chicago....

Teens will get a kick out of this presentation, which provides a glimpse of the consumerism and rising pop culture of 1950's America. They will especially appreciate the discussion of "Teen culture" including the music of Elvis, the...

Students pretend they are taking a certain job in the music industry and respond to questions.

Students listen to popular music of the 50's and 60's to make literature connections to The Outsiders. In this popular culture lesson plan, students evaluate and analyze various songs and connect them with the themes in the literature...

Students explore the connections between Langson Hughes and blues music. In this African American culture lesson, students compare and contrast blues music with poetry and short stories by Langston Hughes.

Young scholars discuss how Run-D.M.C. brought Hip Hop into mainstream popularity. They discuss why melding two styles of music is popular and what the results have been through history. They take two songs and combine elements to make a...