Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Overture to 'William Tell' by Gioacchino Rossini

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Learners create an awareness of how music creates a setting in a story or legend. They identify the instrumentation, dynamics and tempo used to create various settings for a musical story. They perform rhythmic patterns from listening...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

DIGITAL WATERWORKS

For Teachers 6th - 9th
Students add digitally-produced, water sound effects to a song, using electronic keyboards.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Signin' the Blues with Rock, Rap 'n Roll

For Teachers 6th
Sixth graders listen to recordings and study jazz and the blues music. They identify the instrumentation and explore the 12-bar blues progression. After experimenting with different sound, 6th graders create their own arrangement, with...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Weather Watchers

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Students engage in this weather predicting lesson. They discover instrumentation used in the meteorological science. With this knowledge, they will create their own "low-tech" versions of weather instrumentation such as thermometers,...
Activity
Science Buddies

Science Buddies: How Tweet It Is: Bird Songs in Classical Music

For Students 9th - 10th
Do you enjoy singing contests like American Idol? Well, male songbirds have their own version of a singing competition that has been going on for thousands of years, and classical musical composers have been taking notes. In this music...
Website
Northern Arizona University

Northern Arizona University: Sojurn: Anatomy of a Fugue

For Students 9th - 10th
A wonderful site with detailed descriptions of most of the aspects of a fugue, including some examples. The article gets very technical so a background in music theory would be helpful before exploring this site.
Lesson Plan
TryEngineering

Try Engineering: Making Sense of Sensors

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Lesson explore sensors focusing on ones that measure humidity. Students work in teams to design, build, test, and evaluate a hygrometer which was made out of everyday materials to measure humidity levels.
Lesson Plan
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College

Serc: Map and Compass Lab

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Science Scope article presents an activity on topography and land masses that helps young scholars learn about scientific inquiry. Students also practice making and interpreting scale drawings and learning about computation, estimation...
Website
Northern Arizona University

Northern Arizona University: Sojurn: How to Analyze a Fugue

For Students 9th - 10th
This page is very helpful in analyzing and understanding fugues. Great site for music theory students and teachers.
Unit Plan
BBC

Bbc: Music Theory

For Students 9th - 10th
This resource presents a fun and interactive way to learn all about the elements of music. It offers links to information, definitions, assessments, and examples of melody, harmony and tonality, structure, tempo, metre and rhythm,...
Website
Other

Rock Instrumental Songwriting

For Students 9th - 10th
Aimed primarily at the young guitarist, this column addresses how to begin writing your own songs. There is some good advice on how to begin to think of the structure of your song as opposed to just thinking of a few riffs.
Website
Other

Structural Chord Progressions

For Students 9th - 10th
When composing music, it is good to be sure you have the right set of chords surrounding your melody. This column provides a brief overview on how to begin to think of chord structures for your songs.
Website
Other

Using Theme and Variation in Composing

For Students 9th - 10th
A good article on how to take a musical idea and develop it further using theme and variations. Included are a few music samples in written form and mp3 form that help to explain the concept.
Website
Other

Compositional Inspiration

For Students 9th - 10th
Without going into specifics, this article provides general ideas on how to begin writing your own music. A few of the ideas discussed are recording yourself playing around, learn a new scale or pattern, and apply some new music theory...
Website
Other

Guitar Nine: So You Want to Be a Songwriter?

For Students 9th - 10th
As the title suggests, this column deals with songwriting. It does not tell you specifically how to write a song, but it does cover a lot of good information and advice and how to get started.
Website
Other

Writing Guitar Licks

For Students 9th - 10th
You have just written a cool guitar lick and you want to play it in your favorite song, however, it just doesn't sound good in the song. This article explains how you can break down your lick into the key components and refine it to suit...