8th Grade Class Songs & Graduation Playlist

Engaging 8th graders in the final weeks of school is always a challenge, especially for enrichment teachers. However, I found a modest amount of success this year with a student-driven lesson plan based around selecting songs for their own graduation. Students first suggested songs, we compiled them into a bracket-style tournament, and then the winners…

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At Long Last: The 2020 Student Mixtape

Better late than never! After resolving a technical snag I was unaware of, our end-of-the-year songs from LAST year are finally being published. We used the DAW BandLab.com and a loose rubric centered around creating a lo-fi study beat. This was a special batch of songs for me because of the pandemic and the way…

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K-Pop Update!

K-pop (abbreviation of Korean popular music or Korean pop; (케이팝) is a music genre originating in South Korea, characterized by a wide variety of audio-visual elements. Although it includes all genres of “popular music” within South Korea, the term is often used in a narrower sense to describe a modern form of South Korean pop music (kpop) drawing inspiration from…

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2021 Arts Education Conference: Rest & Renew

Ingenuity and Chicago Public Schools co-hosted the annual arts conference on Friday, April 16th. This year’s conference had a unique theme; Rest& Renew. Featuring a variety of calming, centering, and energizing creative experiences, the 2021 Arts Education Conference: Rest and Renew is designed to provide arts teachers and partners space to reconnect with one another,…

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Is Rap the “Poetry of a Generation”?

Dr. Marcyliena Morgan from Harvard’s Hip Hop Archive call raps the “poetry of a generation,” but many would disagree. What are the similarities between rap and poetry and in what ways are they different? We explore this question with this week-long thematic unit that looks at lyrics from modern poets, like Amanda Gorman, and rapper…

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Kandinsky & the Color of Music

Blend artistic disciplines with these fun and engaging ideas around music, art, and sound. Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as the pioneer of abstract art. He also experienced a rare neurological phenomenaa where he could see music and hear color. Explore that strange and wonderful universe…

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Will Education Embrace Remote Learning?

“Remote learning is here to stay for a while,” said Kristen Brody, a CPS parent who spoke at a recent online panel organized by Raise Your Hand, a parent advocacy group. “We need to plan for the long term and we need to have something in place for our families and our students.”

Black Panther Drumming: Music, History, & Culture

The film Black Panther was a huge hit, Chadwick Boseman (its star) passed away in 2020, and the new film will be released in 2021. (2022?) It’s relevant pop culture that is here to stay and will engage students of all ages for years to come. This lesson is a great way to tie-in pop…

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Sing about Martin!

A small collection of resources I’ve compiled over that deal with Martin Luther King. Call and response songs, biographical raps, read-alouds, sign language, and other videos help give students different ways to participate in this lesson. While MLK can be a somber holiday, it can also be a celebration of his life.

How to host a Virtual Winter Concert

With everything up in the air at the end of the year, the annual “Winter Concert” might be low on the list of your priorities. Don’t scrap this time-honored tradition, use the new setting, and circumstances to re-invent what it can be! Sure packing hundreds of students and parents into a gymnasium might not work…

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