Elementary School Lesson Plan

Standard: Students will make connections between music, the other arts, and other curricular areas.

Indicator of Achievement: Students will identify ways in which the principles and subject matter of other disciplines taught in school are interrelated with those of music.

Standard: Students will read and notate music.

Indicator of Achievement: Students will:

• read and perform whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, and dotted notes and rests in a variety of simple, compound, and complex meters
• identify and define standard notation symbols for pitch and rhythm

Materials:

• play money
• a pizza transparency with overlays dividing it into halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths and the notation for each

Preparation: Give students a scenario of a group of students going to the mall and buying a pizza. The students, as they volunteer for the game, select play money to exchange with the teacher/store clerk. The pizza costs $4.00

Activity: The main character invites a friend to share the pizza, but they must split the cost. Students demonstrate on the overhead which division of the pizza and which notes divide the pizza into halves. They give the teacher/clerk the correct change.

The activity continues as the students invite four, eight, and finally sixteen to share the pizza.

After 4/4 time is mastered, introduce 3/4, 2/4 and other time signs. Let the students create their own scenario for what needs to be purchased and divided; or let the students "buy" a measure of music.

When the meter signatures are familiar to all, give the students a price tag (time signature) and have them create a measure of music that adds up to the price tag using any combination of note values. Have the students sing their rhythm example or play it on an instrument of their choice.

Assessment: teacher observation, include students' written measure of music in their portfolio; a multiple choice test on time signatures

Adapted from a lesson by Shirley Brockenborough, Delaware