Day 282: Material Monday: Music Appreciation Curriculum

Daily Blog Challenge Day 282/365

Material Monday

I will be teaching a music appreciation class during the upcoming school year.  This year was the first year for this class and it was taught by the other music teacher in my district.  It is part of the four class rotation for 7th and 8th graders, so I will have one section of each class for one quarter (there are two sections of each grade).  I will be using many of the projects the previous teacher used, but I will need to add new projects for 8th grade because they had the class as 7th graders.

7th grade is 1:1 with Chrome Books, so I plan to use these often during projects.  8th grade is 1:1 with iPads, so I plan to use these during many projects too.

I only have roughly eight weeks with each class and we meet every other day, so we will not have a ton of time.  An extra challenge is that the second half of class is when students are pulled for RTI time, so I must plan a second activity that enriches the students who stay without causing the other students to fall behind or to miss activities.  Right now, my ideas are very broad.  I have a basic idea of what I want to cover, but do not have individual lessons planned out.

I am also brainstorming ways to make the class gamified.  While both sections will be 1:1, I am going to have them create online portfolios using Google Sites for their projects.

7th Grade Ideas
-Instrument Families
-Musical Family Tree
-Musician Study
-Garage Band Project
-Incredibox
-Bucket Band
-Music History Project

8th Grade Ideas 
-Instrument/Musician Study
-Garage Band Project
-Garage Band Group Project
-Incredibox
-Bucket Band
-Music History Project

Do you have any other suggestions for projects or ideas to make the class better?  I would love to hear from you.  Thank you for reading.