Lesson Overview:
Songs about events, times and places in history have been passed down from generation to generation. In this lesson, students will explore historical songs and analyze lyrics in order to learn about historical times and happenings. Students will be introduced to composers and their music as they explore these historical events. Finally, they will survey family, friends, and neighbors to determine what they know about historical songs, representing the findings in the form of graphs and charts.
Length of Lesson:
Four 45-minute periods
Notes:
This lesson is particularly suitable for grades 5-6.
Instructional Objectives:
Students will:
- appreciate the role played by music in history.
- listen to and interpret the message of the songs.
- sing songs for enjoyment and human expression.
- collect songs from history.
- conduct a survey.
- demonstrate an appreciation of music in relationship to history.
- formulate questions for a survey.
- graph the survey results from different perspectives.
- identify different types of music (folk, national, blues, classical, jazz).
Supplies:
Instructional Plan:
Homework/Pre-Class Activity
Inform students that they will be conducting a survey on the "Star-Spangled Banner" as a homework assignment. Assign students to take home the "Star-Spangled
Banner" Survey.
Using the list of questions provided in the handout, have students survey family members, neighbors, local shopkeepers, etc. regarding their knowledge of the "Star-Spangled Banner". The respondents should provide their answers on the spot, without conducting any research. Have students bring the results of the questionnaire to class the next day.
Warm Up
Play the Star-Spangled Banner for students.
Ask them to give their impressions of the song in a brief paragraph.
Ask questions such as:
- How does the song make you feel?
- Do certain sounds within the song lead you to visualize anything?
- Do the lyrics seem to fit the song?
- Do they tell a story?
- Where and when do you tend to hear this song?
Introductory Activity
Discuss the significance of the Star-Spangled Banner in America’s history. Allow students to visit the "Star Spangled Banner" Web site of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History Web site for comprehensive information on the song. In particular, you may wish to have students view the short film, as well as peruse the interactive questions.
Have students explore the Do You Know Our National Anthem? interactive quiz. How many of the students’ respondents knew the correct answers? How many different answers did they receive? Record the different answers on a chart or on the blackboard.
Inform students that the "Star Spangled Banner" is one of the most widely-known songs in the United States. Ask students to name other historically significant songs in the United States. Have the students describe the different genres of the songs in terms of their relationship to America’s varying cultural history (folk music, patriotic music, spiritual music, etc.). Have students write about a particular song and its historical and cultural context. Discuss with students how songs can be a reflection of economic times, geographical areas, human interactions, and politics.
Throughout history songs have been passed on from generation to generation by many groups of people (e.g. soldiers, sailors, slaves, cowboys, settlers, coal miners, railroaders, migrant workers). Ask students to consider a number of the historical songs included in the Library of Congress' Patriotic Melodies Web site. Have students determine which group of people was likely to have passed the song to his/her ancestors, and in what context it might have been shared.
Many American songs have been composed to describe people and places. Discuss how songs can describe people and places of the past. Examples include "Georgia, On My Mind" and the presidential march, "Hail to the Chief".
Select five songs and try to sing them as a class. If lyrics are needed, doing a simple search on www.google.com and using the search terms "American songs" + "lyrics" should provide some results. Select five songs and try to sing them as a class. If lyrics are needed, doing a simple search on Google.com and using the search terms "American songs" + "lyrics" should provide some results.
Examples of historical songs include:
- "Star Spangled Banner"
- "Battle of New Orleans"
- "Dixie"
- "Sweet Betsy from Pike"
- "Clementine"
- "Swanee River"
- "Yankee Doodle Dandy"
- "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again"
- "The Yellow Rose of Texas"
- "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"
- "America, the Beautiful"
- "Camptown Races"
Homework Discussion:
Ask students if they have ever been part of a survey. Where are surveys used? When are surveys used? What kinds of surveys are given? (e.g. political/health/new products, etc.) Who takes surveys and who administers the surveys? Why are they conducted? Once the information is gathered, what happens to it and what/who is it used for?
Have the class develop a list of questions that they would want on a survey about historical songs. Brainstorm with the students and record all ideas on the board or chart paper. Give students time to look over the questions. Ask them to create a list of the questions they feel are the most important, and would yield the best information. Once students have their lists completed, ask for questions from the students and start to compile a list on the board. Students must be able to justify why they have chosen the question and students can also question the choice but they must have reasons to back up their questions. When the class has come up with the questionnaire the teacher makes copies and distributes ten copies to each student.
Have the students take home ten survey sheets, preferably over a weekend so that they will have ample time and opportunity to have a variety of people take the survey. Students should survey as many and as varied a groups of respondents as possible (friends, neighbors, family, school personnel, local shopkeepers, etc.). Explain to the students that people have the right to say, "No" to completing the survey. They should just thank the individual politely and continue on to another person.
Students will use their responses from the ten completed sheets to create graphs. Review graphs with students and discuss the types that they are already used to working with in math class. Students, with assistance from the teacher, should choose a particular type of graph that best defines their survey data. Which type of graph will show the results in the clearest way? With which type of graph are the students most familiar?
When the graphs are completed, students should partner and check each other’s work. Create a classroom graph using the combined information from each of their graphs. Discuss the information and display it in the room. Students should then write a narrative about one of the songs listed among the survey responses. The student should also incorporate the data they researched into the narrative. Finally, students should answer the following question in their journal: "In what ways might we learn about history through music?”
Assessment:
Assess the degree to which students:
- completed the "Star-Spangled Banner" Survey.
- completed the questionnaires.
- completed the chart and graphs from the data collected.
- answered in their journals the open-ended question: "In what ways might we learn about history through music?"
- were able to make conclusions from the information they learned in the class using the data they collected and the graphs they created?
Sources:
Web:
Authors:
-
Eileen Ewald and Maryann Fox, Teachers
Thomas G. Pullen
Landover, MD
