Below are some samples of integrated learning segments incorporating English language development and STEAM into my music curriculum, for grades K-5.
Academic Integration
Fraction Flute
Students cut boba straws to the length of the fractions they are studying, attach them, creating a pan flute. Student can then listen to the fraction they made, giving as auditory representation of the different numerator amounts.
Spelling Melodies
Students use words they think of or invent, using only the notes of music (ABCDEFG) to create melodies, sing the letters of their words, and define them.
Magnet Marble Music Maze
Students create melodies using magnetized notes on a metal surface. Students control tempo and dynamics by choosing the angle/momentum of the ramp, the proximity of the notes to each other and the angle at which the note sits.
Beatbox Phonics
Students practice producing the consonant sounds and clusters in this active, student lead game. One student composes a rhythm by stepping on the drum sound they want to hear and the group produces the phoneme.
Sound Lab
Students build a musical obstacle course, for a marble, using limited materials. Students must measure mass and velocity to create the momentum for the marble to produce notes as it traverses the obstacle course.
Language-based World Rhythms
Students use the proper syllabic emphasis, vocal inflection and phrasing to translate sentences into playable rhythms.
Bicycle Fractions
This wheel allows students to kinesthetically create a fraction and then listen to the fraction. The tire is slit so that your fraction can have a denominator of 4, 8, or 16. Half cut cards are placed in the slits of the desired numerator.
Cut-up Lyrics Game
Students are given a shuffled pile of cut-up lyrics to a song they do not know. In teams, students listen to the song, and attempt to put the lyrics back in order.
Negative Number Trumpet Fingerings
To create notes on the trumpet, the musicians depressed one of many combinations of buttons. Each button lowers the sound by a different negative amount. Students must compute the proper fingering for the note I name by adding the negative whole and half numbers.
Long and Short Vowels Song
First graders learning long and shorts vowels will compose a melody for these lyrics.
Lung, Ribcage and Diaphragm Model
This scale model of the torso features a lung that expands when the diaphragm is lowered due to the airtight space inside the plastic bottle, showing how we breathe as well as the effects of negative space on air pressure.
Soundwave Experiment
Using the brain of a stereo, the inner part that only transmits digital music to the speaker but does not play the music, student will create and justify hypothesis as to how each object will transmit the sound once the speaker brain is touched to the object. Hypothesis will incorporate size, shape and material of the object, and then test their hypothesis.