You could spend a full day discussing The Phantom of the Opera and not scratch the surface, but a set of lessons about the literary elements and themes of the musical production is a great start. Young thespians build upon the...

Musicals have been adapted from stage plays, novels, and movies. With The Lion King, Disney transforms its animated film into show-stopping, live-action musical theatre. The guide Disney provides to accompany a study...

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...

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...

Jazz and the City, Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement, Jazz and Gender, Jazz and Literature, Jazz and the Arts, Jazz and Film. Here's a packet of unit plans organized around themes that reflect American culture. Each unit examines how...

Newspapers aren't only for reading—they're for learning skills, too! A journalism unit provides three lessons each for primary, intermediate, and secondary grades. Lessons include objectives, materials, vocabulary, and procedure, and...

Assess your class's understanding of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility with a fun and creative final project. Using what they have learned about the novel's characters, they create presentations featuring music and images that...

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...

Your class can build strong, well-represented opinions about the music they hear. They listen to, and share thoughts about, a piece of classical music. Then they write a piece of music or a poem, and analyze their peers' work and their...

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...

Immerse yourself in the beautiful, twisted world of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. A detailed lesson plan provides important details about the writing, stagecraft, music, and literary elements of the famous musical,...

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...

Are your classes weary of dreary worksheets? Are the learners nearly napping? Thrill them, fill them with delight with an interactive worksheet that asks them to identify the figurative language Edgar Allen Poe uses to add horror and...

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.

Is your head beating as if it would break into twenty pieces looking for activities to accompany a reading of the woeful tale of Juliet and her Romeo? Here's a weighty tool kit that won't hurt your back. The packet is divided into 20...

Students make connections between music and visual art. In this integrated arts lesson, students design paintings that challenge them to examine the relationship between art elements and principles.

After reading Acts III and IV of Othello, give your class a fun, interactive, music-related activity. Begin by asking students about songs they have heard in movies or plays. Let them look up the lyrics online and ruminate about the...

What do Lady Gaga and Dame Edith Sitwell have in common? As they examine Sitwell's poetry, class members learn that the similarities are far more than their unique appearance.

Explore concepts of audience, purpose and symbols in this lesson from Media Smarts that asks students to consider all the functions of music. Through a series of discussions and activities, your class will brainstorm possible functions...

Every artist creates in his own unique way drawing from a variety of inspirational sources. Upper graders work to expand their understanding of the creative process by first analyzing a modern piece and then creating one. They listen to...

A reading of Robert Frost’s "The Road Not Taken" launches an interdisciplinary study of the connection between the meters of a poem and a melody. After identifying the number of beats in each line of the poem, young musicians use...

Paul Chan's latest exhibit includes seven manifestations of light. Today, kids analyze the pieces 1st Light  and 5th Light. They consider the concept of opposed or dualistic realities found in literature, society, and Chan's work....

A writer has the responsibility to defend the less fortunate members of society. At least that was the view of Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables. The novel is the subject of a study guide from Orlando Shakespeare Theater....

With its focus on nature, individualism, imagination, and rejection of traditional authority, Romanticism has great appeal to young high schoolers. After examining classic paintings and poems as well as current works, class members...