Can You Put a Secret Message in a Song?

Learning Resource Type

Classroom Resource

Subject Area

Arts Education

Grade(s)

4, 5

Overview

Students will read about the Underground Railroad and spirituals.  They will identify how enslaved people communicated through secret messages in songs.  They will listen to spirituals and analyze the lyrics for secret messages.  

Arts Education (2017) Grade(s): 4 - Music

AE17.MU.4.16

Demonstrate and explain how selected music connects to and is influenced by specific interests, experiences, purposes, or contexts.

UP:AE17.MU.4.16

Vocabulary

Rhythm
  • Conducting patterns in
  • Syncopation
Melody
  • Pitch set: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, Ti
  • Treble clef reading (La, So, Mi, Re, Do)
  • Middle C through High B
  • Create melodic sequences
  • Half-step
  • Whole step
Harmony
  • Canons
  • Chord components
  • Chord progression (I, V)
  • Crossover bordun
Form
  • Phrasing: antecedent and consequent
  • D.C. al coda
  • Fine
Expression
  • pp through ff
Other
  • Age-appropriate audience and performer etiquette
  • Orchestra instruments within the 4 families
  • Age-appropriate pitch matching (A3-E5)

Essential Questions

EU: Individuals' selection of musical works is influenced by their interests, experiences, understandings, and purposes.
EQ: How do individuals choose music to experience?

Skills Examples

Performing
  • Demonstrate and explain how specific music concepts (such as form, timbre, etc.) are used to support a specific purpose in music (such as social and cultural contexts) through various means (such as manipulatives, movement, and/or pictorial representation).
Creating
  • Develop criteria and use them to critique their own performances and the performances of others.
Reading/ Writing
  • Evaluate musical works and performances, applying established criteria, citing evidence from the elements of music.
  • When analyzing selected music, read and perform rhythmic patterns and/or melodic phrases with voice, body percussion, and/or instruments, using iconic or standard notation.
Responding/ Evaluating
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the elements of music applied to a listening example using teacher-given vocabulary (such as different sections of complex forms, teacher-selected orchestral instruments, etc.).
  • Explain how the elements and subject matter of music connect with disciplines outside the arts.

Anchor Standards

Anchor Standard 7: Perceive and analyze artistic work.
Arts Education (2017) Grade(s): 5 - Music

AE17.MU.5.16

Demonstrate and explain, citing evidence, how selected music connects to and is influenced by specific interests, experiences, purposes, or contexts.

UP:AE17.MU.5.16

Vocabulary

Rhythm
Melody
  • Pitch set: Do-centered diatonic
  • Treble clef reading (choral octavos)
  • Grand staff
  • Bass clef
  • Accidentals
  • Major scale
Harmony
  • Part singing/ playing
  • Chord progression (I, IV, V)
  • Arpeggio
  • Descant
  • Level bordun
Form
  • Rondo form
  • 12-Bar blues
Expression
  • Vibrato
  • Tremolo
  • Reggae
  • Blues
  • Timbre: soprano, alto, tenor, bass
Other
  • Age-appropriate audience and performer etiquette
  • Age-appropriate pitch matching (Ab3-F5)

Essential Questions

EU: Individuals' selection of musical works is influenced by their interests, experiences, understandings, and purposes.
EQ: How do individuals choose music to experience?

Skills Examples

Performing
  • Analyze the formal structure of music that is to be performed.
  • Identify elements of music to be performed for a specific context (for example, dynamic markings that are appropriate for a lullaby).
Creating
  • Choose a literary work, such as a poem or story, to generate musical ideas for performance.
Reading/ Writing
  • Examine performance music for expressive elements, and use correct notation to indicate placement.
Responding/ Evaluating
  • Justify personal preferences for certain musical pieces, performance, composers and musical genres both orally and in writing.
  • Discuss contributions of musical elements to aesthetic qualities in performances of self and others.
  • Consider and articulate the influence of technology on music careers.
  • Develop and apply criteria for critiquing more complex performances of live and recorded music.

Anchor Standards

Anchor Standard 7: Perceive and analyze artistic work.

CR Resource Type

Informational Material

Resource Provider

Wonderopolis

License Type

Custom
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