Unit 4 — Connecting
Description
Students develop the ability to make connections between music and their real-world interests, experiences, and the broader world around them. Students apply personal experiences to their own compositions, creating unique and individual pieces of work. Instruction encourages students to make connections to social issues that matter to them when creating music, and shows examples of how musicians connect their personal differences and experiences to their creative process. Students explore relationships between music and other arts disciplines, other subject areas, varied contexts, and daily life. This unit helps students understand that musicians draw on diverse sources of inspiration and that personal knowledge, interests, and skills inform their choices when creating, performing, and responding to music.
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.
- Demonstrate understanding of relationships between music and other academic disciplines.
- Demonstrate understanding of how music connects to varied cultural, social, and historical contexts.
- Demonstrate understanding of how music connects to daily life and personal experiences.
- Apply personal experiences to create unique and individual musical pieces.
- Make connections to social issues through music creation and analysis.
Supplemental Resources
- Staff paper and compositional materials
- Colored pencils for notating musical ideas
- Folders for collecting connections between music and other subjects
- Index cards for documenting personal music selections and reasons
Music - Connecting
Students apply mathematical thinking when composing rhythmic patterns, understanding note values, and analyzing musical structure and form.
Students investigate sound waves and acoustics when studying music, exploring how vibrations create sound and how energy transfers through musical performance.
Students explore cultural contexts, historical periods, and diverse perspectives of composers and musicians from various backgrounds and traditions when studying and performing music.
Students analyze lyrics, discuss musical intent and meaning, write explanations for musical choices, and engage in discussions about composers and musical works.
Students perform songs and study musical traditions from various cultures and languages, expanding their understanding of diverse global musical practices.
Formative Assessments
- Group work on interdisciplinary connection projects
- Projects exploring music's role in social issues
- Discussion about personal connections to musical choices
- Question and answer about relationships between music and other disciplines
- Teacher observation of student engagement with diverse musical examples
Summative Assessment
Concert programming project where students visit a music publisher's website and program their own concert, writing explanations for why they chose each piece and how it connects to their interests
Benchmark Assessment
A short project asking students to select one piece of music, explain one personal connection to it, and identify one other subject area or real-world context it relates to. This assesses understanding of how personal interests and knowledge inform musical choices and how music connects to other disciplines and daily life.
Alternative Assessment
Students may demonstrate connections through a recorded audio or video explanation of their musical choices, a visual map with images and words linking music to personal interests, or a one-on-one conversation with the teacher about how a piece of music relates to their experiences. Simplified planning templates or choice boards may be provided to support idea generation.
IEP (Individualized Education Program)
Students benefit from structured supports that help them articulate personal connections to music, since this unit requires both reflective thinking and expressive output. Graphic organizers or sentence frames can scaffold the process of explaining why a musical choice connects to their interests or experiences, reducing the writing demand while preserving the conceptual goal. Oral responses, verbal conferencing with the teacher, or the option to dictate written explanations should be available as alternative output modes. Visual supports that illustrate connections between music and other disciplines or cultural contexts can help students process and retain these broader relationships.
Section 504
Students should be given extended time to complete the concert programming project and any written explanation components, particularly if processing speed or attention affects their ability to organize and express their reasoning. Preferential seating during discussions and musical examples supports focused listening and active participation. Directions for multi-step tasks should be provided in both written and verbal formats to ensure clear access to expectations.
ELL / MLL
This unit's emphasis on personal experience and connection is a natural entry point for multilingual learners, as students can draw on cultural musical traditions and contexts from their own backgrounds. Teachers should provide visual supports — such as images, videos, and labeled examples — when introducing relationships between music and other disciplines or social contexts. Key vocabulary related to music, culture, and personal expression should be pre-taught and displayed in the classroom, and students should be encouraged to make connections using their home language as a bridge before expressing ideas in English.
At Risk (RTI)
Teachers should help students begin by connecting the unit's concepts to musical experiences they already have in their daily lives, such as music they listen to at home, in their community, or associated with meaningful events. Starting with familiar and personally relevant examples lowers the barrier to entry and builds confidence before students move toward more abstract interdisciplinary connections. Breaking the concert programming project into smaller, guided steps — such as first choosing a piece, then identifying one personal connection — allows students to experience success incrementally and stay engaged with the work.
Gifted & Talented
Students who are ready for greater depth should be encouraged to explore the historical or sociopolitical context behind the musical works they program, analyzing how a composer's personal experiences, cultural identity, or response to social issues shaped the music itself. Rather than simply identifying connections, these students can be challenged to construct a more sophisticated argument for their concert programming choices — one that draws on relationships across multiple disciplines or addresses a meaningful social theme. Teachers might also invite these students to consider how their own musical choices could communicate something to an audience, moving from personal connection to intentional artistic communication.