MusEd 351 Planning /Curriculum Unit LESSON PLANNING FORMAT elementary general/INKS

Song Material Titles/Title of Musical Activit(ies)- Yankee Doodle Santa

Lesson Sequence Number: New, #1

Grade level: 5, Mrs. Camp

Primary Musical Concept to be addressed: Expressive Elements Articulations: Staccato/Legato, and
Dynamics

Musical Concepts for the future: Timbre, Genre

Materials needed for the lesson: Omni Chord, Document camera, projector

2-3 behavioral objectives addressed in the lesson, relevant to the concept:
1. The students will sing the correct text, pitches, and rhythms of the songs after teacher model to an
acceptable standard.
2. Students will label these expressive elements as articulations: staccato, legato, and dynamics (Loud, soft,
getting louder, getting softer) and identify them in the score to teacher satisfaction.
3. Students will demonstrate their understanding of expressive elements by adding articulations to a score
of Jingle Bells and performing their composition to an acceptable standard.

Assessment ideas: This will be assessed through performance of Jingle Bells. Markings could also be assessed
through a written test.

Procedure: (in a listening lesson, this section contains the PLAQLE sequence)
Opening Set:
1. Who has heard the song Yankee Doodle Dandy? Let me sing it for you. Does anyone have any ideas
what the song is about? It was written during the Revolutionary War, the macaroni is a feather and by
putting a feather in his hat he was proclaiming himself a gentleman. Today we will be learning a song
for our Christmas Program. It has the same melody as the song Yankee Doodle Dandy, but uses
different words. There is one section in the music that is very different from all the rest. Listen to me sing
the song for you and see if you can identify what is different.
2. Students will be able to identify expressive elements within a piece of music both visually and aurally,
and perform said elements.
Detailed Process:
a. Teaching the song Detailed Process
i. Omni chord for the accompanying instrument
ii. Sing the whole song, making sure the make the staccato/legato and dynamics very
obvious
iii. Talk about what the students noticed in the model, ask them to describe what they heard,
listen for words like short and detached
iv. Use rote to teach the song, should be able to do fairly large sections since the melody
should be familiar and the words are displayed on the overhead, and try to encourage
memorization.
v. Have students sing the whole song while being accompanied on the Omni chord.
b. Introduction of the concept
i. Bring the students attention back to the parts of the song we identified earlier. What parts
of the song were different, or we had to use our voices differently for? What did we do to
make that happen? We call those changes/differences expressive elements. Expressive
elements are markings that tell us to sing in a specific way. There were two different
expressive element markings in Yankee Doodle Santa. The first is a staccato marking.
Who can guess what they tell you to do? Model the staccato section. Have the students
describe. Have them sing it. The other marking is dynamics, they tell you to sing loud,
soft, to get louder, or to get softer. Lets find some places these markings are in the
music.
c. Reinforcement of the concept through skill
i. Now were going to use the expressive elements we just learned to make our own
composition. Lets look at the song Jingle Bells. Were going to add markings to the
score and then perform it. Go over the different marks one more time, write them on the
board. Call on students and ask where they would like to insert different markings.
Review the markings on the score one more time. The students will then perform their
composition as a class.
d. Question addressing the concept/skill
i. What is the difference between the first time I sang the words Yankee Doodle Santa and
the second time? Where was the music soft and where was it loud? How do we know
when to sing loud and when to sing soft? How do we know if a note should be short and
detached?
Closing/Review
Today we learned one of the songs for your Christmas program. What was the name of the song? What
other song uses this same melody, but different words? What is the musical term for markings in a piece of
music that tell you how you should sing? What kinds of expressive elements did we find in Yankee Doodle
Santa?


National Standards in use: This will help you maintain balance in the musical skills/standards you provide for
the students as you develop your planning. Remember that non-skill-based standards are #7, #8, and #9?

Singing Playing Moving Improvising Composing Reading/Writing Listening Evaluating Understanding
X X X


Future lesson ideas: Further dynamics could be a future topic, cover more than p, mf, and f.