Unit 4 — Connecting
Description
Students make connections between music and their personal experiences, interests, and the wider world. They apply personal experiences to musical composition, creating unique individual pieces while considering how music relates to social issues that matter to them. Instruction highlights how musicians' different backgrounds and perspectives impact their creative processes. Students recognize relationships between music and other arts disciplines, other academic subjects, and daily life, understanding how these connections inform their creating, performing, and responding.
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 personal interests, knowledge, and skills relate to choices and intent when creating, performing, and responding to music
- Demonstrate understanding of relationships between music and other arts disciplines
- Apply knowledge of music to other academic disciplines and real-world contexts
- Create music that reflects personal interests and social awareness
Supplemental Resources
- Markers and chart paper for brainstorming connections between music and interests
- Lined journals for reflecting on personal experiences and social issues
- Colored pencils for illustrating musical compositions or related creative work
Music - Connecting
Students apply mathematical thinking when creating rhythmic patterns, analyzing musical structure, and responding to music through counting, measurement, and pattern recognition.
Students explore scientific concepts through music by investigating sound, patterns, and cause-and-effect relationships in musical performance and creation.
Students develop communication skills through discussing musical choices, writing about compositions, listening to and interpreting lyrics and musical narratives, and engaging in collaborative dialogue about artistic intent.
Students examine music from diverse cultural, historical, and social perspectives, learning about composers and musicians from varied backgrounds and exploring how music reflects social issues and cultural traditions.
Formative Assessments
- Group projects connecting music to personal interests and social issues
- Class discussion about how diverse musicians' experiences shape their work
- Teacher observation of creative choices and personal connections in compositions
- Question and answer about interdisciplinary relationships
Summative Assessment
Students create a rap about their personal interests, demonstrating how individual experiences and perspectives inform musical expression
Benchmark Assessment
A short task where students select or create a 4-8 beat musical pattern and explain orally or in writing how it relates to one personal interest or classroom topic studied this year, assessing their ability to connect music to personal experiences and apply learning across subjects.
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate understanding through a teacher-led conversation about their musical choices, with visual supports such as picture cards or emotion charts to help identify connections between music and personal interests. A simplified composition using 2-3 sounds or instruments, with teacher support in explaining how their choices reflect their interests, may replace the rap format.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
Students may benefit from visual supports such as graphic organizers or picture prompts to help them make connections between their personal experiences and musical ideas before composing. Providing sentence starters or a structured framework for organizing their rap lyrics can reduce the cognitive load of the writing process while keeping the creative focus intact. Allowing students to dictate their rap lyrics to a teacher or peer scribe, or to record their ideas verbally rather than in writing, supports access to the summative task without limiting expression. Teachers should check in frequently during group projects to help students articulate their personal connections and musical choices.
Section 504
Students should be given extended time to develop and rehearse their compositions, particularly during the summative rap creation task. Preferential seating during class discussions and group projects can help students stay focused and engaged when exploring connections between music and personal experiences. Directions for multi-step tasks, such as connecting music to another subject area or social issue, should be provided in both oral and written form to support consistent access.
ELL / MLL
Visual cues such as images, videos, and examples of diverse musicians can help build the background knowledge and vocabulary students need to discuss how personal experience shapes musical expression. Key vocabulary related to this unit — such as 'compose,' 'perspective,' 'connection,' and 'social issue' — should be introduced with visual support and reinforced throughout instruction. When possible, students should be encouraged to draw on musical traditions or experiences from their home culture as a bridge to the unit's themes, and simplified directions should be given step by step to support participation in group projects and discussions.
At Risk (RTI)
Connecting music to personal interests is a natural entry point for students who may struggle with more abstract musical concepts, so teachers should lean into this strength by inviting students to share what they already know and love before introducing new content. Providing a simplified structure or template for composing the summative rap — such as a fill-in-the-blank or short phrase framework — can make the task feel approachable while still honoring student voice and creativity. Breaking group project work into smaller, clearly defined steps with regular check-ins will help students stay on track and experience success throughout the unit.
Gifted & Talented
Students who demonstrate strong musical and conceptual understanding can be challenged to explore how a specific musician's social or cultural background has meaningfully shaped their body of work, going beyond surface-level connections to analyze influence and intent. In their summative rap composition, these students might be encouraged to intentionally incorporate elements from another art form, academic discipline, or musical tradition they have studied, articulating in reflection why those choices were made. Gifted students may also take on a more complex creative constraint, such as crafting a piece that addresses a specific social issue while deliberately using musical elements — rhythm, repetition, structure — as tools to reinforce meaning.