Elementary Unit Plan
Since the beginning of this school year, the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students have been studying American composers. The first composer I chose to introduce was Charles Ives. I researched information, created and presented a Powerpoint presentation with important facts, which I projected through the Smartboard, and focused on his piece, "Variations on America," in detail. Below are the two different Powerpoints and the worksheet the students used while studying "Variations on America."
| variations_on_america_-_listening_chart.ppt |
| File Size: | 2536 kb |
| File Type: | ppt |
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Video example coming soon!
We studied Ives and his piece over three lessons, which was the typical time spent on each composer. I think the lessons went well, and the students enjoyed Ives and his music. For the first I introduced Charles Ives with the biographical information in the Powerpoint slideshow, and we sang "America." As a class, we came up with different ways to sing "America," such as changing the volume, tempo, meter, and mode, which segued into listening to Ives' piece. The next week we reviewed his background, and continued with "Variations on America." The students once again created their own variations on how we sang the piece, this time changing the size of the ensemble for each line, and adding a bell on "sing" and "ring." The slideshow I created for studying the piece was used as a listening chart. The students were quiet while listening, and paid attention to the elements brought out in the slideshow. For the last lesson, we reviewed Ives and the piece again, and my co-op and I performed our own variations on piano and oboe. The students really seemed to enjoy creating their own versions of the tune during this lesson. As the final review of "Variations on America," they filled out a worksheet, included above, that focused on important elements covered in the listening chart. As a closer for the lesson, we listened to "Country Band March" and compared it with "Variations on America." Many of the students expressed the opinion that "Variations..." is more normal-sounding than the other piece. For my first composer of the four I presented, I think it went smoothly. The students enjoyed the singing and listening, and I was able to educate them on someone they had never heard of before.
