Lesson Plan
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California Department of Education

Slap Tubes, Flutes, and Xylophones: The Physics of Pipe-Based Instruments

For Teachers 9th - 12th
It's the encore to a wave unit. Individuals build either a slap tube, flute, or xylophone as a culminating activity for a physics unit on waves. Scholars calculate the lengths of pipes needed to produce the specific notes for their...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Design an Instrument

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students design an instrument. In this sound, vibration and pitch lesson, students learn about the characteristics of sound, vibration and pitch.  Students design a guitar using the assembled craft materials and demonstrate how they...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Rubber Band Banza

For Teachers 3rd
Third graders review ideas about sound and vibration to make their own stringed instrument. They review what a pictograph and bar graph are. Pupils conduct a survey within the classroom to choose the four favorite string instruments and...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Woodwind Instruments and Pitch

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students explore musical pitch. In this cross curriculum musical instruments and "sound" physics lesson, students identify and describe common traits of woodwind instruments. Students research "pitch" and what causes pitch fluctuation by...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Energy Transfer in Musical Instruments

For Teachers 5th - 6th
Students create unique sounds using different instruments.  In this energy lesson, students read and define several vocabulary terms such as heat, energy transfer and thermal equilibrium.  Students utilize several household...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

String Instruments and Pitch

For Teachers 2nd - 4th
Young scholars make predictions and explore how pitch is altered in string instruments. For this acoustic science lesson, students learn the types and parts of string instruments and create their own. They listen to classical music and...
Activity
Teach Engineering

Acoustic Mirrors

For Teachers 10th - 12th Standards
Investigate sound waves with acoustic mirrors. Using audio software, groups make recordings of musical instruments, both with and without acoustic mirrors. They compare the recordings to see the effect of acoustic mirrors on sound...
Lesson Plan
Acoustical Society of America

Musical Instruments: Part I

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Pupils construct and play various musical instruments made from straws and bottles. They investigate how changes in their instruments result in tone changes. Learners change the lengths and amount of water in the instruments and...
Worksheet
Curated OER

Loud or soft?

For Students K - 3rd
Send this cute activity home with kids, to increase family involvement. They'll consider what would happen if rice was bounced in a tambourine, and then they'll complete a sound activity by makings an instrument out of wax paper and a...
Interactive
Physics Classroom

Name That Harmonic: Strings

For Students 9th - 12th
Don't string your class along! Physics scholars discover the fascinating forces behind the music of stringed instruments using an interactive. From a series covering sounds and waves, the interactive asks users to identify nodes and...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Driving Music

For Teachers 11th - Higher Ed
Students experience both playing a musical instrument and driving a car. The two experiences tied together by one engineer. The score appears as a road, with twists and turns representing the composer's suggested shifts in mood. This...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Wind

For Teachers 1st - 5th
Students make a wind vane, anemometer, wind spiral, and wind streamer to calculate wind movement. For this wind lesson plan, students test each of their wind instruments, and graph the results of the wind speed in different locations.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Making a Musical Instrument

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Students determine how music is produced through sound waves and how instruments produce music differently than others. They construct flutes out of straws and explore how to adjust the sound.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Listening Walk

For Teachers K - 2nd
Students play instruments that reflect sounds in the story: hoots, toots, creaking, shrieks, clacking, crunching, whooshing, etc. They make vocal sounds from the story: whispered, sniffled, sigh, giggled, croaked, laughed. The...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Instruments and Measurement

For Teachers 9th - 12th
High schoolers circulate through stations to determine the proper instrument to make a certain type of measurement. They must make measurements of mass, volume, length, area, electrical current, temperature and force.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Teaching Dynamics

For Teachers 2nd
Second graders discuss the sounds of rainstorms. In this rainstorm instructional activity, 2nd graders listen to the story Down Comes the Rain and they discuss the change in sounds they hear in a thunder storm. They use percussion...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Let's Play Some Ball!

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Pupils review horizontal and vertical shifts of a parabola and how they effect a specific quadratic formula. They play a basketball review game in which they try to find the right quadratic equation for a given problem in order to earn...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Sounds Like Great Science!

For Teachers 3rd
A phenomenal lesson on sound is here for your third graders! In it, learners engage in hands-on activities, watch video, take part in Internet activities, and complete tasks in cooperative groups in order to explore the world of sound...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Design Weather Instruments using LEGO Sensors

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Young scholars design and create a LEGO structure that will house and protect a temperature sensor. They leave the structure in a safe spot and check the temperature regularly and chart it. After the students have built their structures,...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Sounds Like Science-Kazoo

For Teachers 4th - 11th
Students demonstrate how energy is used to make a sound. In this sound lesson plan, students construct a kazoo from a comb and identify how a sound is made by using force.
Interactive
Scholastic

Study Jams! Invertebrates

For Students 3rd - 8th Standards
Stringed instruments play as viewers explore ocean invertebrates through nine nicely flowing slides. The captions describe the eight phyla: cnidaria, flatworms, roundworms, segmented worms, mollusks, arthropods,and enchinoderms. During...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Paws on Jobland

For Teachers K - 2nd
Students explore various careers in science. In this science and society lesson, the teacher leads a discussion on science careers and duties and responsibilities related to the careers, then students work together to create a mural of...
Activity
It's About Time

Sounds in Strings

For Teachers 7th - 12th Standards
How many of your pupils play an instrument? A musical science lesson will help all of them understand how string instruments work. Young scientists construct a string-and-pulley system to test frequency and pitch. The lesson...
Lesson Plan
University of Texas

Lives of Stars

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Stars exist from a few million years to over 10 billion years, depending on their mass. Scholars perform a play acting as stars to learn about their different life cycles. They develop an understanding of many of the fundamental concepts...