MCCC English Department Lesson Graffiti

 As I mentioned in my first Musical Musings Post, I love working with music. I should probably start this  post off by acknowledging one of the perks of working with music: I like knowing what is "in." I can strengthen connections with my students by sharing songs. I usually find a couple of songs or even a couple of artists to jam out to as a result as well. It is a solid perk. I am in the process of developing a small music-based unit. It is currently a three-week unit that plays equally well with 4 and 5-day weeks. Each week has the same format: teaching modeling, student research, drafting, and edits, and then student presentations. It hits a wide swatch of our standards. I focus on Language Standards with their writing and Speaking and Listening Standards for their presentations. Each week will have a Standard focus unique to it. Week One focuses on tracing how ideas develop and change across artists and uses cover songs and hopefully the original. It focuses on ODE Spea...

I love working with music. While many social media trends escape my understanding, the Tic Tok style of videos use lots of different samples of music across eras and from many genres. This means that "modern" music is ill-defined and old music pops up in surprising ways. Ergo, when I use music in the classroom I am not necessarily just an "old," deeply out of touch. The students have no real consensus of what is currently "cool" and know a lot of my references. I also dig using music because the students typically help me find some new tracks I love, sometimes even new artists or entire genres.  Working with music is typically much easier for students. The pieces are small, poems really, and the music greatly helps the search for meaning in the lyrics.  Lately, my go-to, FIRST WRITING ASSIGNMENT OF THE YEAR (you know, the assignment we use to assess our students' writing abilities) is called "Song Where You Are." The students select a song th...