Grade 4 General Music
Emily Pearce
Critical Media Studies: How Music is Used in Media to Create Specific Emotions
Critical Questions:
1. Can we predict what a video is about based on the background music?
2. Does background music change our perception of what is being shown to us?
3. Can we create our own music to evoke certain emotions?
4. How does our music change others perception of the video?
Objectives/PLOs:
Rational:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Explain thoughts, images, and feelings
derived from a music experience
Demonstrate a variety of feelings in the
performance of repertoire
Use voice or instruments (e.g.,
recorder, ukulele, barred instruments,
found
instruments)
to
create
accompaniments for poems, stories, or
songs (in this case it’s a video)
Explain their choices in elements of
rhythm, melody, and expression in
their singing and playing (e.g., “I played
this part softer because I wanted it to
sound spooky.”)
Music is so available and present in our daily
lives that we often don’t realize when it is being
used to directly affect our thoughts or emotions
towards a product. Children tend to passively
accept the musical choices of adults, and tend to
consume media without critical thought. This
lesson is intended to help students recognize the
impact of musical choices, and to create their
own background music for emotional effect.
Vocabulary:
Resources:
1. Critical Media Literacy:
1. YouTube video – Forest Gump Opening
Being able to look critically at media to
Scene (start at 0:10)
recognize why certain choices were
2. Recordings: Glick’s “Canticle of Peace,”
made, and the intent of the creator.
Ravel’s “Rhapsodie Espagnole – Feria,”
2. Background Music:
and Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody”
Music that is used as unobtrusive
3. YouTube video – Little House on the
accompaniment to a situation, and is
Prairie (from 0:23 – 0:43)
often intended to create a specific
4. Orff Instruments
atmosphere or mood.
5. Blank 11x17 paper
Timing What the Teacher will do:
10min Hook:
1. Play clip of the opening scene from
Forest Gump, first without music, then
with Glick’s “Canticle of Peace,” then
Ravel’s “Rhapsodie Espagnole – Feria,”
and
finally
Liszt’s
“Hungarian
Rhapsody”
What the students will do:
Students will work with partners to
make predictions about what the
movie might be about, based on
each piece of music
2. Discuss the actual plot of the movie, Students will “think-pair-share”
and symbolism of the opening scene.
Ask students how this differs from the
3 predictions they made; were any of
them accurate?
10min
10min
Teacher Led Lecture:
What were the features of each piece of
music, and how did they affect your
perception of the film?
- Listen to each piece of music again and
discuss aspects such as: tempo,
tonality, rhythm, instruments,
phrasing, and dynamics
What features would we use to create a piece
of music that is: happy, sad, scary, or excited?
Students
will
participate
in
discussion, and create posters listing
the musical features that are used to
evoke each emotion.
Student Focus:
Students will brainstorm how the
scene could be understood using
each of the four emotions
Play the clip from Little House on the Prairie
Working in groups, students will choose an Students will refer to the posters to
emotion, and create 20 seconds of get ideas of features they could
include, and create a short
background music that evokes that emotion.
composition expressing a desired
emotion
Groups should keep their choice a secret
10min
Conclusion:
Have students perform their 20 seconds of Perform composition, and be able to
music, and see if the rest of the class can explain their musical choices.
guess the emotion they attempted to portray.
Extension:
This could be turned into a composition activity where students have to notate what they
created so that another group could perform it.
Assessment: Summative:
1. Did the student engage in the activity?
2. Was their composition thoughtful? Could they explain why they made the choices they
did?
3. Can they answer the Critical Questions posed at the top of this plan?
Formative:
1. Take note of engagement in discussion
2. Walk around the room and see whether their compositions reflect the features
discussed.
Homework: Listen critically to the background music used in public spaces, and in media, and
be prepared to thoughtfully discuss one example in the next class.
Reflection:
1. Did the students see how emotions are evoked by the music chosen?
2. Did they understand which aspects of the music evoked the emotion?
3. Were they able to purposefully employ those aspects in their own compositions?
Links:
Forest Gump: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7voy1vit6Y
Little House on the Prairie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDghYs2M9qc
Glick’s “Canticle of Peace”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zclVW7jSueU
Ravel’s “Rhapsodie Espagnole – Feria”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAzEo7Zb-hU
Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0odaG9qi818
Adaptations:
-
If possible, ESL/ELL students will be paired with another student with the same first
language, and encouraged to participate in the initial discussions in their first language
to ensure understanding of the concept.
-
Teacher will use group work time to work more closely with ESL/ELL students, or
students will other learning difficulties.
-
Students with severe hearing impairment will participate in creating predictions about
the movie’s theme from a visual perspective, and will use percussion instruments for
the composition activity. It is assumed that these students would have a learning
assistant that would help them communicate with the class. This student would also be
seated right next to the speaker so they could feel the vibrations of the music and be
able to determine features such as tempo, rhythm, or dynamics.
-
Students with severe visual impairment will participate in creating predictions about
the movie’s theme from an aural perspective, and the teacher (or their assistant, if they
have one) will help them find an instrument that is accessible for them (ex: drums,
tambourine, triangle, recorder, etc. )
-
Teacher will help students with physical disabilities find an instrument that
accommodates them (ex: a student that is paraplegic could use hand-held instruments
such as tambourines, drums, shakers, recorders, etc.)
If technology fails and the videos will not work, students will skip right to discussing how
musical features create emotion, they will do an extended composition exercise, and could
discuss media examples from memory. A follow up lesson would link this one back to media,
and go back to the skipped activity.
This lesson would be part of a unit on composition. It relies on students having comfort
creating their own melodies and improvisations using Orff Instruments (xylophones,
marimbas, glockenspiels, and metallophones; drums; recorders; and un-pitched percussion),
so it would occur near the end of the unit. The unit would be roughly broken into 3 sections:
applying basic composition techniques, why we compose, and how to notate our
compositions.