Middle School Song Creation/Karaoke Lesson

Q: Can you think of a third lesson plan for this project? It's for middle school, and the final project is a play about learning to drive.

A: You can do a lesson that uses the PE and English teacher too! Have the kids write poems about driving (English). Then put the poems to music (create basic I, IV, V accompaniments, etc.), and have them create movement to their own songs (PE).

If creating an idea from scratch scares you, here's something I did in middle school (sixth grade) that went over quite well with the kids and principal:

I had the students choose their song creation method, which corresponded with a unit they were studying in their other classes. The students could do a parody of an existing song. (Karaoke.com has just about any song available for accompaniment tracks.) They could also choose an existing song that was instrumental only and create words that went with it. One class chose an existing instrumental song. We made an abstract diagram of the melodic shape and used long and short lines to represent the rhythm. Then the students filled in the words to fit.

The culminating activity for this lesson was a field trip to a local recording studio. The kids got to record their song. Each brought in a cassette tape (nowadays you can burn a CD), and they all had a keepsake from the unit.

I was cleaning out some old stuff the other day, and I came across the studio master from those sessions. Surprisingly, not only did it bring a smile to my face, but the lyrics the kids wrote to one of the songs (it was a rap) were a kind of historical time capsule of events in the news the year they were in sixth grade. (The lesson was about 11 years ago.)