Academically Enriched Lessons

Classroom and music teachers collaboratively implement Learning Through Music lessons (Academic Enhancement Lessons) that explore and experiment with the many ways that music stimulates and increases learning. These lessons feature concepts that are shared between music and academic subjects.

Sample interdisciplinary Learning Through Music lessons and units:

• Math and music: Students learn addition and subtraction in math class, and then compare rhythmic patterns in four-beat musical phrases to count the number of sounds per pattern. Next, the students vary the patterns, either by adding or taking away sounds.
  
• Language arts and music: Students identify character and plot development in short stories they have read. In related music classes, they sing and learn about ballads-stories that are sung. Next, the students identify character and plot development within the ballads, and compare them with those found in the short stories. Students use this knowledge to create their own stories, poems, or songs.
  
• Science and music: Students classify the various plants they have been studying and then create their own classification scheme for various types of folk, classical, jazz, and popular musical idioms.
  
• Social studies and music: Students enliven the study of the American Revolution by learning and singing songs of the period. They also create their own lyrics for well-known revolutionary songs such as "Yankee Doodle" that describe the facts of history they have studied.