Curated OER
Music Lesson Plan for Teaching Children with (Severe) Autism
Here's a packet of music activities designed specifically for children with autism. Kids learn greeting, echo, and repertory songs, as well as rhythmic patterns to play rhythm instruments.
Curated OER
Middle School General Music Unit Plans
Here's a collection of unit plans for middle school musicians. Topics include the mbira, opera, rhythm and culture, music in Africa, music in the movies, music theory and notation, blues and jazz, and the ocarina. Definitely worth a look.
Curated OER
Set a Poem to Music
Fun awaits both you and your class as you embark on a musical activity. After discussing different rhythmic meters they choose a poem to set to music. The poem must rhyme and be set to a melody in the key of C Major. Because the activity...
Curated OER
Fun Fitness Activities For Kids
From shuttle run relays to ACTIVE Bingo, you'll be elated to have this PE resource packet in your tool belt for your next fitness lesson. After all, who wouldn't want to play a game called, "Elephants, Giraffes, and Palm Trees"?
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Elements of Music—How do Composers Plan?
The introduction to Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and the finale of his Symphony No. 4 provide young musicians with an opportunity to investigate the music elements composers employ to develop the themes they want to create. They compare the...
California Department of Education
Creating a Therapeutic Soundscape: Ambient Improvisations and Planned Catharsis (CTE)
How is music a form of therapy? Scholars explore the topic using the fourth and final instructional activity from the Changing One's Tune: A Music Therapy STEM series. Learners explore the relationship between music and the mind and...
John F. Kennedy Center
Musical Harlem: How Is Jazz Music Reflective of the Harlem Renaissance?
Bring jazz music and the Harlem Renaissance to light with a lesson that challenges scholars to research and create. Pupils delve deep into information materials to identify jazz terminology, compare types of jazz and jazz musicians,...
National Endowment for the Humanities
The Freedom Riders and the Popular Music of the Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s marched to its own beat—literally. Using songs from the era, as well as other primary sources such as King's "I Have a Dream" speech, class members analyze lyrics to discover how music and protest...
Curated OER
Popular Music and Music Videos
This resource is part of a three-activity unit that introduces your class to the concept of popular culture and the role that it plays in their lives. Here, learners examine the importance of the music industry and music videos in pop...
Broadway GPS
ALADDIN: Broadway's New Musical Comedy
Aladdin, Disney's Broadway musical comedy, is a magic carpet ride. Prepare your class for a field trip to the show with a study guide that is a treasure trove of activities, cultural connections, and background information.
Smithsonian Institution
The Sounds of an Island: Jamaican Music for the Classroom
Introduce young explorers to the music and history of Jamaican culture through game songs and dances. As a bonus, class members get to play simple songs transcribed for the recorder.
California Department of Education
Waves and Music
Strike the right chord with a musical activity! Instructors provide a lecture on the mechanics of a pan flute. Pupils build their own pan flutes by using straws and calculating the lengths to create a scale. After cutting the straws to...
Discovery Education
Mood Music!
Grouchy? Sad? Here's a great resource that shows kids how music can be used to lift their spirits. Kids collect and chart data on the effects of music on emotions. After analyzing the results of their experiment, they develop their own...
Curated OER
Magical Musical Tour: Using Music Lyrics to Teach Literary Elements
While music lyrics are often used to teach literary elements, the richness of this resource comes from the wealth of exercises, activities, and support materials provided in the packet. Although designed for gifted learners, the...
Education World
Black History Month Rap
Young scholars write a rap or hip-hop lyric about the life of a famous Black American. They explore famous Black Americans in history and explore how the rap form compares to other forms of poetic expression.
Curated OER
Math, Fractions, and Music
Students discover the relationship between musical rhythms and fractions. They add musical notes together to produce fractions and create addition and subtraction problems with musical notes. Students complete worksheets and create their...
Curated OER
Musical Hoops
Pre-schoolers gain a better understanding of personal space by playing this modified version of musical chairs. Played like musical chairs, students circle around a ring of hula hoops as music plays. When the music stops everyone needs...
Curated OER
Theater Arts/Creative Movement Lesson Plan
Here is a series of five exercises intended to bring movement, dance, and theater into the classroom. Intended for special ed classes, but appropriate for any grade, learners will pantomime, play pretend, dance, move, and create...
Curated OER
Rap Your Way Through Integers
Your resource or special education class will have fun with this interesting approach to learning about integers. They use rap, movement, and an interactive online game to reinforce the rules of integers. A well-rounded lesson that...
Curated OER
Christmas Music Lesson Plans
Christmas music lesson plans add a little spice to the season.
National Center for Families Learning
The Summer Fun Summer Learning Music Unit
Take note. Soul music. Gospel music. Country music. Summer comes alive with the sounds of music as program participants learn about various genres of music, create instruments, and write and perform songs about the facts and traditions...
California Department of Education
Call the Tune: Music in Literature
I am dancing to the music in my head. Scholars learn to listen for music in their heads as they read literature and poems. After they identify and analyze poetic devices that relate to music, they create their own musical poems.
Curated OER
High School Lesson Plan
Students compose and arrange music within specific guidelines. They # identify and explain compositional devices and techniques used in a musical work. They compare and contrast the use of those techniques between different compositions.
Film English
Mixtape
A short film about music is the inspiration for a well-sequenced lesson that includes discussion, group work, and writing. After the whole class converses about music, small groups write narratives about a still from the film. Pupils...