2019/20 SEASON NUTCRACKER SUITE
LESSON 3: ACTIVE LISTENING AND POETRY LESSON OBJECTIVE: Students will practice active listening by connecting how music impacts one’s mood. Students will listen to music composed by Tchaikovsky, and journal images, ideas, and emotions that they felt while listening. Students will make further connections by writing a short poem about the music or what they experienced. DURATION: 50 mins MATERIALS: Handout 4: Active Listening, Handout 5: Figurative Devices, access to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker (Spotify or YouTube), paper (or writing notebooks), pencil STANDARDS: CCSS ELA/Literacy: LS 5 Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings. CCSS ELA/Literacy: Speaking and Listening Standards: SL 5.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners on Grade 5 topics and texts, building on other’s ideas and expressing their own clearly. CA VAPA MUSIC, Grade 5: 4.1 Identify and analyze differences in tempo and dynamics in contrasting music selections. Social Emotional Learning Competency: Recognizing one’s feelings. CONCEPTS/VOCABULARY: Active Listening (music): What you do when you’re focusing on what you hear, for example focusing on the words someone is saying when you are having a conversation. Alliteration: Use of words with the same letter or consonant sound that repeats. Composer: A person who writes music by organizing sound. Dynamics: Varying degrees of volume in the performance of music. Imagery: The use of pictures/visuals to describe/paint a picture in words. Metaphor: A direct comparison. Onomatopoeia: Use of a word associated with a sound. Personification: Giving human qualities to animals, inanimate objects or abstract notions. Simile: A comparison using like or as. Suite: A musical composition consisting of a succession of short pieces. Tchaikovsky: Famous Russian composer of the Romantic era whose music is heard in The Nutcracker. Tempo: The pace at which music moves according to the speed of the underlying beat. GUIDING QUESTIONS: How does the tempo or dynamics in a piece of music impact the way you feel? When you focus on listening to a brief section of music, what do you see, feel, or imagine? How is writing poetry similar to composing music?
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