Five Cross-Curricular Activities for Elementary General Music Classes

There are many times that I have read on various elementary music networks that elementary music educators are being asked to show how they implement cross-curricular connections. These connections can range from showing the relationship between math and music, reading and music, and integrating particular units studied in the classroom to music, and more. Whether one agrees with it, in all likelihood, you are already connecting other subjects into your music classes, even ones as young as early childhood. Here are five cross-curricular activities (and one bonus with tech tips!) for elementary grades that connect other subjects into your music classroom, while keeping your music objectives and standards at the center of your lessons.

If you begin your classes with vocalizations to warm up the class, or if you are following Dr. Feierabend’s eight-step workout found in his book, First Steps in Music for Preschool and Beyond: Revised Edition (GIA, 2020), then connecting letters and sounds come naturally. Whether I am correlating with the letter of the week in the preschool or kindergarten classrooms, or if I am subtly implementing the letters of the musical alphabet, I will begin my classes with a letter on the screen. The students then identify the letter and its sound. Then they draw the letter in the air making the sound and vocalizing to the direction that they draw the letter. For example, if the letter is V, and I show a picture of the letter V (see figure 1), I ask the students what the letter is and the sound of the letter. We then begin high, singing “V” as we trace the letter in the air. This reinforces the letter and its sound while you are having the students vocalize or perform a pitch exploration.

Tech Tip: Use the free educator’s version of Canva (https:// www.canva.com/education/) to create the letters so you can print them or display them on a screen.

Kindergarten curriculum includes learning to read and write sight words such as “the”, “at”, “I”, “am”, and “to”, to name a few. Many of the songs used in the Kodály approach or step three of Dr. Feierabend’s First Steps, “Simple Songs” include songs with these sight words. An example is the song “Teddy Bear” (see figure 2). After teaching this song through sound before sight, movement, sol-mi melodic body percussion, and

Figure 1: Displaying a letter for a pitch exploration exercise Figure 2: Teddy Bear from https://kodaly.hnu.edu/song.cfm?id=877

performing the sol-mi pattern on pitched instruments, you can show them the song and have the students find the sight words. In this song, such sight words that they may know include “the”, “go”, and “that”. The process focuses on singing, identifying high and low pitches, performing rhythm patterns, and identifying the melodic pitch pattern of sol-sol-mi. When showing them the music, you are having them experience the written notation of the music, but the focus is on the sight words as they would most likely not be ready to read the music notation yet.

Tech Tip: Websites such as https://kodaly.hnu.edu/ and https://www.bethsnotesplus.com/ have many songs free to use as manipulatives in your classroom.

First grade is a time when many students begin to learn basic addition and subtraction, as well as celebrate the number 100 (this occurs in younger grades as well). For basic addition and subtraction equations, we build upon the vocalizations and pitch explorations described in #5. My first graders will answer the math equation and then perform pitch explorations as we trace the equation in the air (see figure 3). The pointers are added so that the students identify whether they begin that number with a high or low voice.

The number 100 can be integrated into the music class in various ways. I have had students add up rhythm values so that as a class combined, their rhythm patterns equal 100. My first graders have also created a “100 Favorite Song List”. With this activity, we have guidelines such as the songs can or cannot have lyrics; the songs have to have a title (so that they do not just name a movie or an artist); they cannot “yuck someone’s yum”, meaning that they do not have to like all of the songs, but they have to respect the songs on the list; and that the songs have appropriate lyrics. The latter is a challenge, but many songs that they might name have Kidz Bop versions that can be placed on the list. Though this activity might not work for all music classes, it is one to consider if the 100th day of school is a prominent day at your school.

Tech Tip: The Figure 3 was created in Google Slides using the scribble and shapes tools.

Figure 3: Math equations as vocalizations and pitch explorations

Chrome Music Lab’s Kandinsky App (https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/kandinsky/) lends itself well to a crosscurricular study of Wassily Kandinsky, an artist who compared painting to making music. By collaborating with the art teacher, music and art came together by first using the book, The Noisy Paint Box (Knopf, 2014), by Barb Rosenstock (Author), Mary GrandPre (Illustrator). Then, in art class, the students created works inspired by Kandinsky. In music class, they took their artwork and recreated it using the Kandinsky App. One suggestion for this project is to let them create freely first when they use the Kandinsky App because they might want to create many smiley faces. Then, have them replicate their artwork using the app. There are some challenges as the app only allows the creator a limited number of items on the screen before it begins deleting them. And, what they create in art class might not be able to be recreated by the app. Therefore, allowing the students the freedom to create new artwork within the app works as well as replicating their original artwork. Finally, when the art teacher and I collaborated on this project, we brought it all together by placing the artwork and the music into an ebook (see figure 4).

Tech Tip: We used Book Creator (https://bookcreator. com/) to create the ebook. We added pictures of their artwork along with screen recordings or video recordings of their music created with the Kandinsky App since the app does not have a sharing feature at this moment.

Figure 4: Kandinsky artwork by grade 1 found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE42SF08ZR4

Science and music are two subjects that do naturally connect, especially if your school focuses on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) or Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM), or some additional variation of the acronym. There are numerous examples that connect science in music class from studying how sound is produced in various instruments, to creating music when students are studying certain animals. In the latter, music class has integrated the students’ study of whales. We have used composition tools such as Flat.io to have the students compose a melody that emulates songs they hear the whales produce. The students then use Soundtrap EDU (https:// www.soundtrap.com/edu/), which is a combination of GarageBand and Google Docs so students can collaborate as they create music all housed in the cloud, to give their melodies an accompaniment. Another great music creation tool that my good friend, Dr. Jim Frankel, recently posted is Google Arts and Culture Paint with Music (https://g.co/arts/B6ut6Kya28UZ1ier5). Students can click on the underwater music tab and create music with whale sounds.

The fifth graders then create Google Sites that give information about the whales that they studied. They can place the music that they created onto their google site by embedding it. If they used Soundtrap, they can download the music as an mp3 file. They can then upload it to their Google Drive, make the audio file shareable, and copy the link. When they open their Google Site, they can click the embed button and paste the link. It will now appear on their Google Site. To learn how to do this, here is a YouTube video that explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irSTS8CF4eU If they use the Google Arts and Culture Paint with Music to create their underwater music for their site, they can click the share icon and share the link to their Google Site.

Tech Tip: Soundtrap EDU is a paid subscription. If you need a subscription that is EDU and free, try BandLab (https://edu.bandlab.com/).

References:

BandLab for education: Free award-winning Education Platform. BandLab. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://edu. bandlab.com/

Book creator - bring creativity to your classroom. Book Creator app. (2022, January 27). Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://bookcreator.com/

Chrome Music Lab. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/kandinsky/

Create and collaborate | CANVA for education. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://www.canva.com/education/

Feierabend, J. M. (2020). First steps in music for preschool and Beyond: The curriculum. GIA Publications.

Google Arts & Culture. (n.d.). Paint with music. Google Arts & Culture. Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://g.co/arts/B6ut6Kya28UZ1ier5

Home. Beth's Notes. (2020, September 10). Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://www.bethsnotesplus.com/

How to add audio files to your new google sites - YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=irSTS8CF4eU

Kandinsky - Grade 1 at Far Hills Country Day ... - youtube.com. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HE42SF08ZR4

Each grade level studies various places from around the world. Whether it is the study of continents, countries, states, etc., this study can connect naturally in music class. In the example of the study of certain countries, when the students come to music class, we can incorporate dances and songs from those countries. We can also incorporate rhythm playalong videos of songs from various countries. One example of this is the song Gong Xi, a popular song sung around the start of the Lunar New Year. This song can be integrated into music class when the students might be studying the country of China in their classroom. They can listen to the song, learn a ribbon dance to the song, and then learn how to read and perform rhythm patterns or the melody to a play-along video of the song.

My hope is that this article helps with ideas that can be adapted or with ways that one can see that integration has been occurring naturally in their elementary general music class while keeping the music concepts, approach, or standards as the focus of the lessons.

Rosenstock, B., & GrandPré Mary. (2014). The noisy paint box: The colors and sounds of Kandinsky's abstract art. Alfred A. Knopf.

Soundtrap for education - make music and podcasts online. Soundtrap. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://www.soundtrap. com/edu/

Teddy Bear 2. Kodály Center for Music Education - Song. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2022, from https://kodaly.hnu.edu/song. cfm?id=877