Mikey Mayer
EDF Lesson Plan
April 24, 2018
Music Around the World
1. Time Needed: 45-50 minutes
2. Materials Needed: Recordings of different cultures’ music, hand-drums, steel-pan
drums, headphones for each station, short summary of that country’s culture and musical
background. 4 Maps of the World
3. Age Group of the Lesson: This lesson can be applied to any age group, but it would be
most beneficial for elementary school students the way it is laid out.
4. Learning Objectives: The students will learn how different cultures’ music works, and
learn how to discuss and perform their own music using the knowledge of other cultures
5. Multicultural Objective: The students will learn how different cultures use music and
will be able to respect the different cultures and make their own music.
6. Assessment: The students will know how different cultures’ music works, and discuss
and perform their own pieces
7. Personal Objective: I will make sure that the students are respecting the other cultures,
and not have ego culturalism in the classroom
8. Procedures:
a. Greet the class with a smile “Hello everyone, today we are going to be doing
something a little different”
b. Explain that there are four stations around the room, each having a different country
as its focus
c. Have them count themselves off from 1-4 so there is no type of racial or gender bias
with grouping
d. Have the 4 groups go to the four different stations
e. Instruct the groups to first find their country on a map
f. Then have them read how each country uses instruments, and where the big beats are
located, the more accented beats
g. Have them put on the headphones provided, and have them listen to an example of
the culture’s music and analyze it
h. Have the students on the computers provided drag the correct instruments to the right
country on the world map. By using a visual representation with technology and
audio to go with it, the students get all three learning styles, visual with the mapping,
audio with the sounds, and kinesthetic by the changing of the stations
i. Have them start making a simple drum beat in their group, discussion is
recommended
j. After about 5 minutes tell them all to switch to the station on the left
k. Have them repeat the previous steps to learn about the next country
l. Walk around and make sure discussion is not hurtful to the other cultures
m. After about 5 minutes, have them switch again
n. Repeat stages e-h two more times
o. By this time the students should have visited all four “countries”
p. Have them go back to their first country, and have the first country talk about the
culture of that country, what instruments are primarily used
q. Have them perform their composition using the culture’s rules they discovered
r. Repeat this step, but with every other “country”
9. Closure: “ Good job everybody, I really hope you all learned something new today,
remember that no culture is better than any other one, have a wonderful day!”
10. Analysis: By incorporating different countries as different stations in the lesson, it will
allow the students not only get the music from one different culture, but it will allow
them to be more involved in other cultures as well. By having them research the different
music from each country and having them make their own music using those different
countries, it can expand their minds not only in the creative sense, but also in a
multicultural sense. By using a cultural identifier such as location, the students can
become more open minded not just on their music, but with the countries as well. I feel
like this lesson can act like a game, which in my opinion goes very well because the
students will be playing and not be forced to learn but learn through play. Supervision is
required for this lesson to make sure that egocentrism is not taking effect, and that
learning is actually happening, and to make sure groups are being nice to others and
being inclusive with everybody.
