Unit Plan Form/Blues Composition

Topic: Pattens in Music and Musical Form

Content Standards:

USA- NAfME - Grades K-12 National Standards National Association for Music Education
Grade Level: 3-4
Content Standard: Listening to analyzing and describing music
Achievement Standard: identify simple music forms when presented aurally
Achievement Standard: demonstrate perceptual skills by moving, by answering questions about, and by describing aural examples of
music of various styles representing diverse cultures
Content Standard:  Reading and Notating music
Achievement Standard: Use standard symbols to notate meter, rhythm, pitch, and dynamics in simple patterns presented by the teacher
Content Standard: improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments
Achievement Standard: improvise short songs and instrumental pieces, using a variety of sound sources, including traditional sounds,
non traditional sounds available in classroom body sounds and sounds produced by electronic means.

Enduring Understandings – Essential Questions –

1. Pieces have an inherent 1. How can we differentiate between different
structure with a beginning, sections and ideas in a given piece of music?
middle, and end that have a
climactic turning point

2. How can we organize musical patterns into an

original composition?
2. Music is created with
repeating ideas and patterns
that are used as themes within
a given piece
3. How can we use knowledge of patterns and form
to improvise on a blues progression?

Key words – composition, musical theme, a

section, b section, blues, improvisation.
What is the most important Content Knowledge What are the most important Skills that students
that students will learn in this unit? How will you will learn in this unit? How will you pre-assess
pre-assess knowledge? skills?

Students will be able to differentiate separate sections in Students will be able to improvise melody through
a piece of music rhythmic patterns.

Students will understand the structure of a piece in Students will be able to identify separate parts of a
terms of a story or narrative composition’s form

Students will learn to improvise melody using rhythmic Students will be able to correlate pieces of music with
patterns as a vehicle storytelling

Students will be able to compose music within specified Pre-Assessment

parameters
Students will be asked to

Pre-Assessment
Students will answer questions about • Label iconic rep maps for musical form
• Organize known music into its correct format
• Compose rhythmic compositions within given
• Prior knowledge of folk music and twinkle twinkle parameters
• Prior knowledge of storytelling (Beg/Mid/End)
• Prior knowledge of form in music
What is the end-of-unit summative assessment for
students?
Students will demonstrate knowledge of form by creating a Beg/
Mid/End illustrated story map of a given historical work.
Students will demonstrate knowledge of form and patterns by
performing compositions within a blues form with pre-composed
rhythms and optionally improvised pitches/melodies.
Which EU and EQ will this task assess? How/why?
How does the performance assessment task link to the
unit standards?
Students will organize pre composed patterns into compositions
on a blues form
Students will label and differentiate between different sections of
musical works

Students will improvise pitches in accordance with an original

rhythmic composition that they will perform in front of the class.

Day 1 Pre-Assessment

Lesson: Students will answer questions about prior knowledge of musical form and composition. Students will listen to and
analyze different works via iconic representation maps to understand their form in relation to story telling ie Beginning Middle
End with a climax.

Activity: Pre-Assessment/Discussion/Active Listening to Pieces

Day 2 Intro to iconic rep/story maps

Lesson: Students will be given story maps/iconic rep charts of a selection of given pieces which we will listen to in turn in class.
Students will be walked through the maps at first, then asked to label each map in terms of beginning, middle, and end. Class
discussion will be had about correlating stories to the given pieces of music.

Activity: Class discussion, labeling of iconic representation maps.

Day Story map Project beginning

Lesson: Students will be tasked to write a story to run parallel with a given historical piece of music. Students will listen to the given
piece and create a story to accompany the piece with 3 separate illustrations of the beginning middle and end respectively. They will
also be tasked to write 2-3 sentences to describe each illustration.

Activity: Creation of an individual interpretation of a given piece

Day 4 Story Map Project day 2

Lesson: Students will be tasked to write a story to run parallel with a given historical piece of music. Students will listen to the given
piece and create a story to accompany the piece with 3 separate illustrations of the beginning middle and end respectively. They will
also be tasked to write 2-3 sentences to describe each illustration.

Activity: Creation of an individual interpretation of a given piece

Day 5 Twinkle Twinkle and A/B Sections.

 Lesson: Students will analyze twinkle twinkle in iconic rep/story maps. We will as a class separate the A and B sections of the song
and define the form as AABA. Students will then separate into groups and sing the separate sections in twinkle twinkle as a class
ensemble

Activity: Class performance as ensemble, Intro to A and B sections.

Day 6 Intro to the Blues form/music history of the blues.

Lesson: Teacher will perform a short composition on a Blues progression and break down the blues into an 8-16 bar format with
AA1BA form. Students will listen to examples of blues music from a variety of different sources from BB King to Charlie parker etc.
Assignment of Blues composition project where students will create an 8 12 or 16 bar blues composition through rhythmic patterns
improvised on Orff metalophones or other instruments tuned to a tetratonic or pentatonic scale.

Activity: Blues demonstration and active listening to the blues/Begin Unit project

Day 7 Unit project Cont.

Lesson: In class work on Blues project. Students will be invited to play their compositions and judge them privately with one on one
teacher feedback. Students will be encouraged to develop repeating rhythmic ideas and themes in their compositions. Students will
also be encouraged to create repeating ideas in pitch once they grasp repeating rhythmic ideas.

Activity: Blues comp project

Day 8 Unit project Cont.

Lesson: In class work on Blues project. Students will be invited to play their compositions and judge them privately with one on one
teacher feedback. Students will be encouraged to develop repeating rhythmic ideas and themes in their compositions. Students will
also be encouraged to create repeating ideas in pitch once they grasp repeating rhythmic ideas.

Activity: Blues comp project

Day 9 Class presentations

Lesson: Students will perform their 8-16 bar rhythmic compositions for the class with accompaniment from the teacher.

Day 10 Class presentations

Lesson: Students will perform their 8-16 bar rhythmic compositions for the class with accompaniment from the teacher.