I wanted to share a great, QUIET activity I’m using in class this week. It’s easily adaptable to many music history topics but I am using it specifically to cover a composer from the modern era, Aaron Copland.
My students have already learned about the baroque, classical, and romantic eras in music history. We used a lot of Quaver material for these topics. Quaver is the best for music history, in my opinion. There’s not a lot of Quaver material on modern composers though, so I had to get creative.
I created a section on my portaportal where I could put links for this project. I linked to the DSO kids websites, Classics for Kids, Worldbook for Kids, as well as the American Masters website (although this is a high reading level for most of my students.) I was especially happy to include Classics for Kids because there is material there my students can listen to, which is great for my low readers.
I went to google forms and created a form with a few basic questions about Copland as well as some open ended questions. I showed my students how to open two tabs and they worked (with headphones) on finding the answers and filling out the form. I am able to easily look at all their answers at once and NO PILE OF PAPER!
This activity does require technology. If you have fewer computers it would be a good partner project. It’s great for these end of the year testing days when we have to be quiet. My students learned and retained a lot about Copland by seeking out the answers for themselves!
Here’s my Google form if you want to use it for inspiration:
https://docs.google.com/a/hampton.k12.va.us/forms/d/1rMYO6YIahVWEMAlDjXnLRASwCQROfpQQpe08fjzSdSw/edit?usp=drive_web#responses