This lesson is intended for a music class but would be a great way to teach compare and contrast to any class. Kindergarteners dance the Hokey Pokey to four different styles of music and examine two paintings of Humpty Dumpty, then...

Identifying the tone of a piece of writing or the author's attitude toward the subject matter can be difficult for learners. Simplify the process with a lesson that begins with skits, moves to songs and their lyrics, and then to passages...

Song lyrics, like poems, are meant to be heard. After examining the literary devices in several poems, scholars examine the lyrics of popular songs and identify the sound devices and the figurative language writers use to create the...

Here’s a cross-curricular program music activity that uses Peer Gynt to engage class members. Groups take one section of “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” choreograph their section of the tune to represent the story as they imagine it,...

Nikki Wallschlaeger's Violin is the featured poem in a instructional activity that uses music and multiple readings to delve deep into its analysis. After a writing warm-up, learners watch and listen to a video that showcases Regina...

Fourth graders explore ballet. In this dance and music humanities lesson, 4th graders practice ballet positions and play a card game using French ballet vocabulary. Students count beats in rhythm patterns and listen to classical music...

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...

In this music worksheet, students read 4 paragraphs of information about music and wars. Students learn the 4 main roles of music in wartime. Students answer 5 questions.

After class members have read and discussed Act III of The Winter’s Tale, groups select one line from Act III, scene i that they feel captures the essence of the entire scene. They then create a tableaux that best depicts the scene’s...

Young scholars consider how film soundtracks can help support not only the mood but also the tone of a scene. After viewing two very different trailers for the same film, class members create their own soundtracks for two party...

Rudyard Kipling's "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" and a song from the musical "Hamilton" allow middle schoolers to practice using punctuation to indicate whether sentences are indicative, imperative, or interrogative. 

In this mood worksheet, students read a passage and define the theme, mood, and purpose of what they read. Students complete 3 questions.

Looking for a resource to introduce homeschoolers and other out-of-class learners to the elements of poetry? Check out this packet that defines and illustrates important poetry terms.

Tone is a tough topic to teach to teenagers. But never, fear, help is here in the form of a unit plan that takes advantage of their interest in music to set the stage for a series of activities that lead them to understand how setting,...

Before Woodstock, there was Newport. Get plugged in to the social changes of the 1960s with a lesson that looks at Bob Dylan's performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival as a symbol of the radical changes that marked the era.

How do pupils relate paired passages to each other? Here's a resource that helps! The lesson includes a short story and a poem as a set of paired reading passages, followed by some analysis questions. It also includes an essay template...

In this Romeo and Juliet worksheet, students combine music, lyrics, and drama to analyze Romeo and Juliet. Students select music to fit the theme, mood, and feeling of each act and research the lyrics. Students compose an essay about why...

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

Students watch various interpretations of Shakespeare's Macbeth in film. In groups, they examine the setting, characters, music and sequence. They compare and contrast the various films and discuss the differences. They write an essay on...

Students analyze their feelings after reading or listening to music. In this moods lesson, students react to the feelings generated by the story or music they heard. Students pair edit their stories.

Using Alpha Smarts, 3rd graders write a "Story-in-the-Round". The end result of this project is one story for every student in the class that has been written by the entire class. Students create a PowerPoint presentation with a...

Start the flow of writing with music! Help learners free-write and brainstorm by playing various selections of music. After each selection, scholars talk about the theme and mood and then practice free-writing on their own. Lighten up on...

Students, utilizing video clips and Web sites, compare specific passages from original texts to moments in Broadway musicals on which they were based, analyzing similarities and differences between them. They adapt literature into a...

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...