When TEAMM All-Stars Cathy and KuanTing asked me to meet and brainstorm ideas for integrating history into music lessons, I assumed we be talking about “music history.” That wasn’t exactly what happened! This brainstorm session yielded a WEALTH of new ideas and inspiration, and I hope you will benefit from it as much as I did. Wrapping or lessons in the imagery and language of a historical period is a BRILLIANT idea, and very much in line with the values at MusicXT. In this post I’ll reflect on our chat and include a video excerpt from the conversation. But first…
Housekeeping:
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From the Archive:
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Cathy and I had chatted before about her school, which encourages teachers to integrate historical periods across the curriculum. It works well enough in the middle elementary grades when you’re talking about Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods; and in later elementary grades as they explore the 20th century. However, the early elementary grades have a focus on ancient civilizations. It becomes challenging to integrate these themes into lessons in which the children are still working on very basic musical skills and comparatives.