Storytelling

Learning Target OR Standards & Connections
  • MU:Pr4.1.5a Demonstrate and explain how the selection of music to perform is influenced by personal interest, knowledge, and context, as well as their personal and others’ technical skill.
  • MU:Pr4.2.5a Demonstrate understanding of the structure and the elements of music (such as rhythm, pitch, form, and harmony) in music selected for performance.
  • Additional connections here
Essential Outcome(s) Level(s)
Students will…

  • explore Soundtrap as a resource to make rich recordings. They will explore the basics of recording techniques to create a polished version of the original soundtrack they have created based on their original story creations. They will have a final polished product in the form of an mp3 to be dropped in the visual representation of their story they create. At the end of the year, there will be a culminating celebration of the compositions and creations using various digital media platforms.
 Upper Elementary
Activity/Project
Music is often used as an expressive outlet for storytelling. In fact, the place we most often hear instrumental music today is in the form of movie soundtracks. In this unit, students will write their own story, compose the music for it in my class, and create the visual representation in class. In a choice based model, studios with resources will be available around the room for students to use as they wish. This choice based approach will encourage the self monitoring of the development of the 9 studio habits of mind. Students will self assess and track these projects independently while tracking their

progress weekly on seesaw on their explorations, providing feedback to each other and will have 1 finalized WOW! Piece to add to their portfolio by the end of set work sessions, eventually leading to completely self guided explorations over the years.

In this part of the unit, students will explore Soundtrap as a resource to make rich recordings. They will explore the basics of recording techniques to create a polished version of the original soundtrack they have created based on their original story creations. They will have a final polished product in the form of an mp3 to be dropped in the visual representation of their story they create. At the end of the year, there will be a culminating celebration of the compositions and creations using various digital media platforms.

Full Lesson Plan

  1. Full vocabulary, material list, performance tasks and assessment pieces can be found here courtesy of Meghan Nally.


The author of this is Meghan Nally. Meghan is a K-8 music educator in Chicago.  She received her undergraduate degree at Illinois Wesleyan University (’11) and her masters degree at Northwestern University (’18) and has been teaching in Chicago Public Schools for the last 7 years.  She focuses her practice on exploring choice based learning and student ownership in the general music classroom.

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