Literacy Integration |

Musical Story Time – An Arts Integration Unit

Combine disciplines with this fun and engaging arts-integrated unit. We take four classic children’s books, and read them aloud, then add in a musical concept and re-read the stories integrating our new musical skills. Whether you’re trying to incorporate music into your story time or stories into your music time, these will interest and involve…

What My Students Learned From Playing Dungeons & Dragons

As part of my school’s Summer Learning Program, we offered a variety of teacher-led clubs that included basketball, recycled arts, ukulele, as well as Dungeons and Dragons. It was an awesome experience to watch the same group of students grow over the duration of the club. It was such a slow, holistic growth that it…

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…

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…

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…

The Sign of the Beaver: A Game-based Learning Project

After leading a small Lit Circle with some 3rd & 4th graders we took our text, The Sign of the Beaver, and turned it into a board game. A fun and effective activity that utilized both project-based and game-based learning. Literacy instruction isn’t typically within my wheelhouse but I was really proud of the work…

Snow Sounds: A Musical Story Unit

Is it story time? Music time? Why not both! During this fun and engaging seasonal unit, students will enjoy listening to and creating their own winter sounds. With fun activities such as: a Winter Bingo listening game, a read-aloud picture book, and a DIY create your sounds project! An interdisciplinary unit that allows students to…

Spring has Sprung: an Interdisciplinary Music Unit

In this exciting cross-curricular unit students learn all about spring! Using music as a platform we touch on all sorts of K-2 Standards, from parts of a plant (science) counting currency (math) and The Very Hungry Caterpillar (reading). Perfect for both the sunny and rainy spring days! Unit Overview Video: Find Materials Here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/A-Sound-Mind …

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

As spring approaches (supposedly) I like to incorporate the changing of the seasons into my music lessons. Young learners are fascinated by nature and science, and one of the most fascinating things is, in my opinion, the caterpillar’s metamorphosis. Using the 1969 Eric Carle classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, we explore the science behind these…

AG&C: Week 6/7 – Discussion Groups

Wrapping up the Graphic Novel unit we had a lot to celebrate and a lot to reflect on. It was really a new experience for me as a teacher as I had never ran such in depth lit-circles before. The students all enjoyed the novels immensely but the discussion and reflection pieces left me wanting more. Luckily,…