Romantic Unit for 6th and 7th Graders

This unit took five days but has worked well for me in both sixth and seventh grades. (My classes meet five days a week for nine weeks.) I used the unit to allow me to concentrate my mental, emotional, and physical energy on the upcoming choral performance while keeping the general music classes busy and on task. You will need several sets of old-fashioned print encyclopedias. You can plan activities to relate some of the music to National Standards VI (Analysis), VII (Evaluation), and IX (History and Culture) as well as to Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science (problem solving).

The purpose of this unit was to teach my students about the Romantic Era. I wanted them to learn more than they would if I taught about one composer or musical selection. I also wanted them to make the connections between new and previously taught material. So, instead of selecting one composer, I told the class we had a problem to solve. Our goal was to discover "What do these composers have in common?"

I gave the class a list of 14 names and asked the students to work in small groups to find out basic information about each person (i.e., birth and death dates, country of origin, what instruments or musical styles they wrote, and the name of one or two famous compositions). I also asked them to find out if the composer knew any other famous people. The clue was to help them make a few connections, but mainly because middle school students are so social, and I thought they would like to know who people knew.

We spent two class sessions using the encyclopedias and taking notes (my Language Arts teachers LOVED me). We reviewed bold print and italics as clues that a word was important, quotation marks and underlined words identify titles (i.e., poems, songs, operas, books, etc.), and parenthesis often hold dates and other important information. We talked about using the guide words on the pages of encyclopedias, dictionaries, and telephone books to locate the correct page. We discovered that "Hector" was definitely not "Hector Berlioz." I was asked if the answer was, "They were all composers," and I agreed that they were but told them that we were looking for something else.

On day three, I used a transparency of a teacher-made chart to organize the information we gathered. We completed six of the composers together, and then students worked together to complete their individual charts.

On day four, we reviewed and familiarized ourselves with the composers by playing a question and answer game where I asked a question, students found the answer on their charts, and the first student to respond correctly asked the next question. Everyone who responded correctly received a very small piece of candy. I don't give candy very often, so this was much enjoyed and appreciated.

On day five, we created t-charts, Venn diagrams, and other charts/graphs to organize the composers into groups. The winners identified that all of the composers lived sometime during the 19th century. I then talked a little about the Romantic Era.

Overall, I think students enjoyed doing something a little different. We listened to different compositions every day. I wrote the titles and the names of the composers on the board before class began. I defined a few musical terms that I wanted the students to know, and they copied these. We commented on the selections at the end of each day. The students have great notes and have made a personal connection to 14 composers and 14 musical compositions. I will assess from an open notebook test with several open-ended response questions.