Contemplate what music learners listen to and why they listen. Can they find poetry within music lyrics? Specifically hone in on blues lyrics and ruminate upon the social issues prevalent in the themes. Particular song lyrics coincide...

Watching Great Performances’ Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival Chicago launches an investigation into and discussion of how the electric guitar and guitarists have changed the sound of the blues over time. An engaging way to...

Here is a complex lesson plan that interweaves the history of the Jim Crow South and the Great Migration with the study of poetry, art, and blues music from the Harlem Renaissance. The plan helps young historians develop a deep...

The Blue Man Group, three bald performance artists painted blue, offer lessons designed to engage, intrigue, and excite the imaginations of all ages of learners. Groups craft a trickster tale, invent melodious mathematical instruments,...

Brenda Z. Guiberson’s nonfiction book, Cactus Hotel, launches a series of activities that model for readers how to determine the main idea in a passage.  Class members engage in an online interactive game to test their...

Review addition and color recognition skills using this resource. After reading the Dr. Seuss story One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, learners practice one digit addition by completing six problems. They color the fish on the sheet...

What a great cross-curricular instructional activity to give to your kindergartners! They get printing practice by tracing the word blue, connecting its meaning by coloring bubbles blue. Finally, they connect the shape of the...

Model for young readers how to make the shift from passive to active reading by making text-to-self and text-to-text connections. After a series of activities that provide guided practice, the focus shifts to making text-to-words...

An online interactive activity encourages young readers to employ the monitoring/repairing strategy to become better readers. Class members identify unfamiliar words, decode them, and use them in other contexts.

Model for your class how to become a better reader through questioning. After conducting a picture walk that introduces prediction strategies, learners play an interactive questioning cube game. Complete directions for the game and...

Introduce young readers to the comprehension strategy of visualizing by asking them to think about a place that makes them happy. After illustrating or using words to describe this place, the class moves on to an interactive game using...

This lesson plan enables students to gain a broader awareness of the basic blues scale and the harmonic structure of the standard blues progression. Students will be given introductory exercises on blues improvisation and will also...

This lesson focuses on how the blues both operates as poetry and informs the poetry of many prominent African American poets. Students consider the poetic devices and recurring themes in blues lyrics and the significance of the poetry of...

In this lesson students will learn about finding the blues in a variety of musical styles. They will investigate instances of the blues form heard in mainstream pop music, along with exploring the musical styles of two new artists who...

This lesson examines both the content and form of lyrics in blues songs. In addition to highlighting the basic musical form of a blues song, it also addresses the use of floating verses in blues music, both within the context of the...

This lesson shows how the blues can be used to enable students to explore gender divisions in the United States, both in the past and the present. Most blues songs are about the relationships between men and women, as are many songs in...

This instructional activity enables teachers to use blues styles and performers to think about various geographical regions of the United States. By studying different blues styles from the Mississippi Delta, Texas, and the Piedmont...

The crossroads, and the decisions made and entities met there, are a common theme in literature, pushing readers to examine the choices and encounters that shape life experience. The theme has also been explored in blues music, most...

This lesson enables teachers to use blues music to explore the history of African Americans in the 20th century. By studying the content of blues songs, young scholars can learn about the experiences and struggles of the working-class...

Model for young readers how to use illustrations, chapter titles, and events in a story to draw inferences and make predictions. Learners then practice these essential comprehension strategies by drawing inferences for another section of...

If figurative language makes your kids feel blue or under the weather, use an activity focused on idioms to help them feel on top of the world. Kids complete a chart with seven idiomatic phrases, adding the meaning of each along with an...

What ultimately influences a musician's creations? Is it the time in which he/she lives, his/her personal experiences, the music of the time and previous times, or the image the artist hopes to convey? This lesson explores these...

African American history during the Jim Crow era includes encounters with poverty, racism, disrespect, and protest. Harper Lee develops all four of these themes in her famous 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. To help learners understand...

When slavery took Africans from their land, they were separated from the rich musical and oral traditions native to each country and region. While working as slaves, Africans found they had two places where they could use these musical...