Beacon Lesson Plan Library

   Lesson Plans - Music

• 12 Days of Christmas (Authored by Anissa Sanz.)

Subject(s): Music, Theater (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: This is a fun and creative way to explore the 12 Days of Christmas. This lesson reinforces numerical order, repetition within a song, and group effort. It’s also very cute to see the creative ways the students “become” the 12 Days of Christmas. Composition with instruments is also involved.

• A Hymn for the Classroom (Authored by Tisa Craig.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: This lesson introduces students to hymn singing and allows them to participate as singers in the choir and as accompanists in the bell choir.

• A Place for Me in the Field of Music (Authored by Tisa Craig.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Students listen to interviews with career musicians. Students work in groups to present to classmates the life, music, inspiration, and goals of a favorite composer, performer, or group.

• A Wing and a Prayer (Authored by Kathryn La Rosa.)

Subject(s): Language Arts, Music (Grade 9 - Grade 12)
Description: Students improvise missing harmony accompaniment for a soloist performing -The Star Spangled Banner.-

• At the Corral (Authored by Sandra Rosengren.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: "Down at the ranch" students learn dotted eighth/sixteenth note rhythm pattern using percussion instruments and alternating from "corral to corral" in groups of 4-6. They play the pattern while listening to selected American western theme songs.

• Bounce & Sing Introduction (Authored by Tisa Craig.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: This activity is performed at the beginning of the school to introduce students to classmates and the teacher.

• Buggy Beats (Authored by Deborah Supe.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: The students have an opportunity to use both creative and logical sides of the brain by developing an understanding that ALL words have a logical, patterned rhythm of their own, and by being able to create and perform their own unique musical compositions.

• Chairs That Speak Rhythm (Authored by Marguerite Schmitzer.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Using chairs to visualize beats, this lesson introduces the concepts of whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes to second graders.

• Chasing Peter's Wolf (Authored by Sharon Hardy.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students listen to Prokoviev's Peter and the Wolf, relate the story to the music and identify instruments and their representative characters. Students learn that music communicates events and images that help the listener to better understand a story.

• Composer of the Month (Authored by Anissa Sanz.)

Subject(s): Language Arts, Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: In order to keep music alive in the schools, we need to validate our class. What better way to do that than to intergrate social studies and writing into the Music Class?

• Dance with Me (Authored by Diane Weiner.)

Subject(s): Dance, Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Students create a simple dance that illustrates the changes in rhythm in a song.

• Digital Waterworks (Authored by Sharon Schubert.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Students add digitally-produced, water sound effects to a song, using electronic keyboards.

• Do a Ditty (Authored by Catyn Coburn.)

Subject(s): Language Arts, Music (Grade 9 - Grade 12)
Description: Students work in cooperative groups to create a -ditty- to teach the characteristics that distinguish literary forms to younger students. The ditty is performed before the class.

• Do You Remember? (Authored by Kathryn La Rosa.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 9 - Grade 12)
Description: The student demonstrates an awareness of where a melody and melody fragments enter different voice parts, and adjusts dynamically to enable the listener to perceive these events. Each student uses a rubric to make critical evaluations of the performances.

• Dressing the Blues (Authored by Dorothy Sheldon.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Dressed for Blues Day, fifth grade students improvise a Blues melody choosing from these notes, G,Bb,B,D,or E, using xylophones and/or block flutes.

• Dynamics in Concept and in Action (Authored by Paul Dobson.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 6 - Grade 8)
Description: Students perform grade appropriate literature utilizing the specified dynamic indications and respond accurately to the cues of the director.

• Fiddlin' Around (Authored by Sandra Rosengren.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: In this lesson students learn to play open strings on the violin, viola, cello, and bass using proper bow technique while playing "Twelve Bar Blues" in the key of D.

• Five Little Pumpkins (Authored by Jill Taylor.)

Subject(s): Language Arts, Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students learn to play rhythm instruments as part of a rhythm band to accompany the well-known poem, "Five Little Pumpkins." They learn instrument names, playing techniques, and playing at the appropriate time. Students learn how to perform a vocal solo.

• Flowers Growing Through Music, Rhymes & Movement (Authored by Beth Delmar.)

Subject(s): Music, Science (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Begin with a traditional singing rhyme, which leads us to "plant" seeds in the ground. From there, we experience the growing process of a seed becoming a flower as it is exposed to the sun, rain, wind, day and night, and "tickling" bees.

• Fun with Form (Authored by Debbie Reynolds.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Your students will successfully identify basic ABA form in a song after this fast-paced lesson, which uses simple activities and appeals to their various learning styles.

• Get into the Groove with Style (Authored by Roberto Gonzalez-Trigo.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Style! Style! Style! Your students will identify four styles of music that are exciting and fun to learn. They will learn Classical, Rock, Jazz, and Caribbean music.

• Get Ready for FCAT with Music in Our Schools Month! (Authored by Anissa Sanz.)

Subject(s): Language Arts, Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: This lesson encourages the integration of writing skills with music during Music in Our Schools Month, which is in March. Afterwards, the smiles on the students' faces when they see their essays displayed around school is reward enough.

• Goldilocks and the Bears Make Their Pitch (Authored by Elizabeth Roederer.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students listen to the story of [Goldilocks and the Three Bears] and identify the pitch of the bears' voices as high, medium, and low. Students improvise on xylophones a melody to accompany the bears in the telling of the story.

• Green, Green, Green (Authored by Anissa Sanz.)

Subject(s): Dance, Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: This lesson travels around the world celebrating St. Patty’s Day and all things green! First, we start of in Ireland and travel our way down to Mexico for some green guacamole. Students will learn dances from the two places.

• Hey Good Looking, What You Got Cooking? (Authored by Diane Weiner.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students perform a song and skit to illustrate how music can be used to communicate movement. .

• Hey, Cuz! (Authored by Tisa Craig.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 6 - Grade 8)
Description: Students learn the relationships between rhythm and math, tone color and science, form and geography, melody and art, and harmony and social studies. Why, they are like cousins!

• How Do I Measure Up? (Intermediate Grades) (Authored by Tisa Craig.)

Subject(s): Mathematics, Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: This activity allows students to compare the relationship between meter in music and measurement in math.

• I Have a Little Pony (Authored by Jill Taylor.)

Subject(s): Dance, Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Primary students will be introduced to barred percussion instruments learning to play simple bordun patterns to express the way a pony moves.

• I Heard It on the Radio (Authored by Terry Gladfelter.)

Subject(s): Language Arts, Music (Grade 9 - Grade 12)
Description: Students will create a portfolio that reflects knowledge of present day professional musicians or individuals related to the music industry.

• Introduction to Call and Response (Authored by Latoya McCormick.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students listen to, sing, and dramatize call and response songs. They deomonstrate expressive singing in performing call and response while moving and playing instruments.

• Just an Old Fashioned Love Song (Authored by Nora Perez.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 6 - Grade 8)
Description: Students sing a song with three-part harmony.

• Let's Play (Authored by Roberto Gonzalez-Trigo.)

Subject(s): Mathematics, Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: In order for students to read music, they must be able to recognize and perform individual notes and patterns. Watch students' faces for pure enjoyment as they demonstrate patterns aurally through hand/body movements, visually through manipulatives, and finally perform them on instruments.

• Let's Play Again (Authored by Roberto Gonzalez-Trigo.)

Subject(s): Mathematics, Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Expression is an important element in music. This lesson plan will enable students to familiarize themselves with basic variances in dynamics and tempo, and later perform them on instruments. The lesson will conclude with review activities.

• Listen Up (Authored by Roberto Gonzalez-Trigo.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Having a great ear is a skill that must be constantly exercised. This lesson allows your students to enhance their listening skills while giving them the opportunity to lead the class in a Play and Echo Game.

• Listen, Look, and Move! (Authored by Michele Dawn Manieri.)

Subject(s): Music, Physical Education (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: This lesson presents a personalized, interactive socialization song-game in which students sing and move to a familiar melody.

• Love Changes Everything (Authored by Kathryn La Rosa.)

Subject(s): Language Arts, Music (Grade 9 - Grade 12)
Description: Students edit a score excerpt that has been deliberately modified to more accurately interpret the composer's idea as represented on a recording of the excerpt. Students justify any recommended changes to the score.

• Make Your Own Musical Instrument (Authored by Robert Coursey.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students create paper straw instruments to produce a sound and discover changes in tone or pitch in relation to length of the straw.

• Meter Readers Turned Composers (Authored by Tisa Craig.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Students learn to interpret time signatures/meter, and then compose eight measures of music in the meter they select.

• Money Sings (Authored by Thomas Lucey.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 6 - Grade 8)
Description: Students listen to and perform songs to learn the perceptions of people in regard to their financial holdings.

• Move Over, Beethoven (Authored by Martha Stanley.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Students, in small groups, create an ABA introductory composition using various, student-chosen sound sources. Student self-assessment opportunities are available.

• Music's Speed Zone (Authored by Elizabeth Roederer.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students relate tempo in music to the story of the “Tortoise and The Hare.”

• My Way (Authored by Terry Gladfelter.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 9 - Grade 12)
Description: Students perform an improvisation of the Blues that could be used to accompany a video about a decade in American history.

• Name That Tune (Authored by Terry Gladfelter.)

Subject(s): Language Arts, Music (Grade 9 - Grade 12)
Description: Students listen to music that is representative of different styles, periods, cultures, composers, and performers and identify the music using as least two areas of classification.

• Nobody Does It Better (Authored by Terry Gladfelter.)

Subject(s): Language Arts, Music (Grade 9 - Grade 12)
Description: The students complete a journal entry using criteria developed for justifying the type of music they prefer.

• On with the Show! (Authored by Jennifer Kirchhoff.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 6 - Grade 8)
Description: Students perform in musical ensembles using the district adjudication sheet to assess their performance.

• Our Anthem (Authored by Jill Taylor.)

Subject(s): Language Arts, Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: In honor of the Olympics, students learn some national anthems of the world. They use the melody of “America/My Country 'tis of Thee” to cooperatively brainstorm and write their own town or school anthem.

• Pies and Rhythms (Authored by Robert Cox.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Students learn to use different types of pies to recognize and notate rhythms in standard notation. The students use popsicle sticks to illustrate rhythms clapped by someone else.

• Quit Playing Games on My Chart (Authored by Diane Weiner.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students correctly identify an instrument or family of instruments after listening to a taped excerpt of the instrument being played.

• Rhythmic Travel Around The World (Authored by Tisa Craig.)

Subject(s): Music, Music, Social Studies (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students accompany songs from various countries on rhythm sticks. The CD used in this plan is -Multicultural Rhythm Stick Fun- -Kimbo Educational. (see Weblink)

• Rock the Rocky Road (Authored by Sharon Hardy.)

Subject(s): Music, Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Students independently perform an accompaniment on a barred instrument using appropriate techniques such as mallet control, keeping a steady beat, and attention to tempo and conductor.

• Simple Melody (Authored by Susan Dane.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Students write out the rhythm to a song using stick notation.

• Sing As One (Authored by Tisa Craig.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Prepare students for district festival, all-state, competitions, or even singing the two-part songs performed in the World's Largest Concert by rehearsing with recorded music featuring their parts played alone, progressing to students singing their parts accapella and, finally, performing with other parts in an ensemble with piano accompaniment.

• Sing that Tune (Authored by 2301.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: A formative activity to encourage listening skills and matching tones. The students work toward singing a musical passage without accompaniment and maintaining the tonal center.

• Skin & Bones (Authored by Jill Taylor.)

Subject(s): Music, Theater (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students act out the story and play instruments to accompany a spooky song.

• Small and Tall (Authored by Sharon Hardy.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students demonstrate pitch direction by using movement and visual representation.

• Sounds You See, Hear, and Feel (Authored by Michele Dawn Manieri.)

Subject(s): Music, Science (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students explore and experiment making sound wave vibrations on various musical instruments and common objects. The will also compare/contrast, demonstrate, and describe actions that cause sound wave vibrations which can be seen, heard, and/or felt.

• The Composer's Blueprint (Authored by Tisa Craig.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Students recognize AB and ABA form in music and distinguish between these two forms. Students also learn the meaning of tempo and how to perform accents in written music.

• The Sorcerer and You (Authored by Sharon Hardy.)

Subject(s): Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students will become familiar with The Sorcerer's Apprentice and the tone poem written by Paul Dukas. They will identify instruments (bassoon) and understand how music can communicate ideas suggesting events, feelings, and moods.

• Two by Two Guitars! (Authored by Sandra Rosengren.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: In this lesson, students learn to play three simple chords on guitar while singing American folk songs.

• Watch Your Conductor Like a Hawk (Authored by Roberto Gonzalez-Trigo.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Stop students from burying their heads in the music and their eyes away from the conductor. This lesson uses a music sheet to isolate the musical elements of tempo, balance, and blend while having the students focus their eyes on the teacher.

• What Is My Family Name? (Authored by Tisa Craig.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Can you hear with your ears what you have seen performed? In this lesson students listen to selected solo instruments and place the instrument in its correct family of instruments. Students also identify from listening examples: orchestra, band, vocal solo, and choral performance.

• Which One is Forte and Which One is Piano? (Authored by Anissa Sanz.)

Subject(s): Foreign Language, Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: In order to know if your students know the difference between forte (loud) and piano (soft), this is a good assessment lesson to do. The students have fun and are tested on what they have learned at the same time.

• Winter Wonderland (Authored by Terry Gladfelter.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 9 - Grade 12)
Description: Students demonstrate knowledge of stylistic interpretation by choosing one piece of music, recording a verbal introduction describing the style to be performed, and recording a significant section of the music that reflects that style.

• You Can Play It (Authored by Roberto Gonzalez-Trigo.)

Subject(s): Music (Grade 3 - Grade 5)
Description: Diversity! Do you want your students to be able to perform on different instruments and have fun doing so? This lesson will give young musicians the foundation needed to appreciate the wonderful rainbow of sonic timbres.

• You’ve Got My Money! (Authored by Anissa Sanz.)

Subject(s): Language Arts, Music (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: This lesson is best done around Halloween time but it can be done with any story that has a repetitive section. Students will recall Orff instrument families and specific instruments so that they can put sound “effects” to certain words in a scary story to make it more interesting. Not only does this reinforce knowledge of the different instruments and their families (i.e. Woods, Skins/Membranes, Metals, Shakers/Scrapers), it also helps them listen for repetiveness within a story.

• Your Song (Authored by Diane Weiner.)

Subject(s): Music, Science (Kindergarten - Grade 2)
Description: Students create an instrument to demonstrate their understanding of how the science of vibrations is used to create sounds.