Unit 4 — Connecting
Description
Students develop the ability to make meaningful connections between music and their personal interests, experiences, and knowledge across disciplines and daily life. The unit encourages students to apply personal experiences to their musical compositions and to recognize connections between music and social issues that matter to them. Instruction includes examples of diverse musicians creating music and discusses how their differences impact their creative process.
Essential Questions
- How do musicians make meaningful connections to creating, performing, and responding?
- How do the other arts, other disciplines, contexts, and daily life inform creating, performing, and responding to music?
Learning Objectives
- Demonstrate how interests, knowledge, and skills relate to personal choices and intent when creating, performing, and responding to music
- Demonstrate understanding of relationships between music and the other arts, other disciplines, varied contexts, and daily life
Suggested Texts
- Charlie Over the Ocean — folk song
- Austrian Went Yodeling — folk song
Supplemental Resources
- Staff paper for compositional materials
- Pocket folders for collecting work across disciplines
- Printed images and photographs for musical inspiration
Music - Connecting
Students use rhythm instruments and patterns to explore mathematical concepts including counting, patterning, and basic mathematical thinking through musical composition and performance activities.
Students develop speaking and listening skills through discussions, collaborative work, and question-and-answer activities related to music creation, performance, and response. Students use words and syllables to prepare rhythmic concepts and express musical ideas.
Students learn about diverse musicians, composers, and cultural music traditions, exploring how music reflects communities and different cultures while developing understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion through exposure to varied performers and musical traditions.
Students develop body awareness, posture, breathing techniques, and physical coordination through musical performance and movement-based musical activities.
Formative Assessments
- Group work on interdisciplinary projects
- Discussion about personal connections to music
- Question and answer about relationships between music and other subjects
- Teacher observation of student engagement with connected learning
- Skill testing of ability to apply personal experience to musical choices
Summative Assessment
When composing or improvising, students choose activities and subjects that are important to them, such as songs about topics or interests they care about.
Benchmark Assessment
Projects demonstrating connections between music and other disciplines
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate connections between music and personal interests through alternative formats such as drawing pictures of things they like and pointing to or naming them while listening to related music, or by selecting from visual choices of instruments or songs that match their interests. Verbal responses with teacher guidance and simplified response options may replace more complex written or collaborative tasks.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
When exploring personal connections to music, provide students with visual supports such as picture boards or image cards representing everyday experiences, interests, and emotions to help them express their ideas without relying solely on verbal or written output. Allow students to share their musical connections through drawing, movement, or dictation rather than written responses. Break discussion and composition tasks into smaller steps, and offer consistent check-ins to help students process and organize their thinking before contributing to group or class activities.
Section 504
Ensure students have access to a low-distraction environment during discussions and listening activities, as making personal connections to music requires focused attention and reflection. Provide extended time during any composition or response tasks, and offer preferential seating to support engagement during group work and whole-class conversations about music's relationship to other subjects.
ELL / MLL
Build on students' home cultures and musical backgrounds by welcoming music and instruments from their own communities as valid entry points for connection-making. Use visual cues, photographs, and short video examples to support understanding of how music relates to other subject areas and daily life. Provide simplified, clear directions for discussion and group tasks, and allow students to express personal connections in their home language when needed before sharing with the class.
At Risk (RTI)
Help students access the connection-making process by starting with concrete, familiar experiences — such as songs they already know or activities they enjoy — before expanding to broader interdisciplinary ideas. Offer structured prompts and picture-supported organizers to help students identify what matters to them so they can channel those interests into musical choices. Celebrate every meaningful connection a student makes to build confidence and encourage continued engagement.
Gifted & Talented
Challenge students to explore how a single personal interest or social topic can be expressed across multiple musical elements — such as tempo, dynamics, or mood — and across different art forms simultaneously. Encourage independent inquiry into how a musician they admire has drawn on their own life experiences or cultural background to shape their creative work, and invite students to reflect on how they might do the same in their own compositions. Push students to articulate and defend the intentional choices behind their musical ideas rather than simply making them.