The SPECIAL COLLECTIONS are constructed alongside documentaries, feature films, and with other partners who help us engage issues appropriate for all classrooms through music.
CNN Soundtracks: Songs that Defined History
Soundtracks: Songs that Defined History, from executive producer Dwayne Johnson, Show of Force and CNN Original Series explores the music tied to pivotal moments in history. From the March on Washington to the riots at Stonewall – every episode illuminates how music has played an integral role in celebrating, criticizing, and amplifying these seismic events in our collective history. TeachRock has partnered with CNN and Show of Force to offer a collection of standards-aligned contemporary history lessons to accompany this eight-part CNN series. See a CNN Soundtracks lesson in action at East Side Community High in New York, NY here!
Long Strange Trip: The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead
The potent mix of musical, literary, scientific, and philosophic influences from which the Grateful Dead sprang made them, in some ways, the most American band. As such, the Grateful Dead’s story creates an exciting window through which students can explore key people, times, places, and issues of the U.S. throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Created in partnership with Amazon Films, the seven lesson plans in the Long Strange Trip: The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead collection create a pathway through which K-12 teachers of all disciplines can use clips from the film, historical documents, and other...
LADAMA: Movement, Music, and Community in South America
LADAMA: Movement, Music, and Community in South America gives elementary school students the opportunity to explore the performing arts, culture, and ecology of Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil. With interactive instruction from the members of the group LADAMA, students sing in Spanish and Portuguese, perform traditional dances, and learn the underlying rhythms to musical styles throughout South America. In addition, each lesson offers a variety of worksheets and classroom activities to introduce students to South American history, culture, and ecology. Learn more about what the lesson collection has to offer below:
Segregation and Integration in Asbury Park
TeachRock’s lesson collection “Segregation and Integration in Asbury Park” provides educational materials for the film Asbury Park: Riot, Redemption, Rock & Roll. In this three-part lesson collection, students discover the impact the city of Asbury Park has had upon the history of American popular music, and investigate the local conditions that led to the emergence of artists such as Steven Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen. More than this, the lesson collection asks students to think of Asbury Park as a case study for the racial dynamics in the United States. By watching clips from the documentary, examining interviews with local...
Math and Music: Algebra Featuring Mickey Hart
Math and Music: Algebra Featuring Mickey Hart is a four-lesson unit aligned to 7th - 9th grade standards and designed to fit most algebra classrooms. Through a variety of hands-on activities, algebraic calculations, and graphing exercises, students discover the physical principles of sound waves, the mathematics behind tuning and harmony, and the ways sound and music are measured using mathematics. Check out the Math and Music: Algebra Featuring Mickey Hart Unit Plan here! Learn more about what the lesson collection has to offer below:
Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World
The award-winning documentary RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World tells the story of a profound, essential, and, until now, missing chapter in the history of American music: the Indigenous influence. The standards-aligned TeachRock RUMBLE lesson plans can help you bring that story into the classroom. Drawing on short clips from the film, troves of source documents, archival photos, and journalism, the TeachRock RUMBLE lessons introduce students to important Native American musicians including Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Salas, Redbone, Buffy St. Marie, Robbie Robertson, and the Black Eyed Peas' Taboo. The materials require students to engage in thoughtful discussion...
The Music that Shaped America
TeachRock is proud to present The Music that Shaped America, a lesson collection that draws on the rich archive of Alan Lomax’s Association for Cultural Equity, enlivening American history of the 18th through early 20th centuries with the sounds of regional folk musics and the personal stories of its performers. A musicologist, writer, producer, singer, and talent scout, Alan Lomax was above all else an advocate for working class people. Feeling that it is “the voiceless people of the planet who really have in their memories the 90,000 years of human life and wisdom,” Lomax dedicated his life to recording,...
Sun City
During apartheid, blacks were stripped of citizenship, separated by tribal ethnicity, and forcibly relocated to reservations called “bantustans.” The white minority government employed fear to maintain control, suppressing criticism with unchecked violence, and imprisoning anyone who dared question apartheid in public. The 100th TeachRock lesson plan uses Steven Van Zandt’s Artists United Against Apartheid “Sun City” project as a gateway to an exploration of apartheid and various international attempts to end it.
The Beatles
TeachRock has created extensive educational materials to accompany director Ron Howard’s TheBeatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years. Exploring The Beatles as an unprecedented musical and social force, the various lessons expose the profound changes that came with “Beatlemania” and feature clips from the film, along with other multimedia assets.
PBS Soundbreaking
TeachRock has partnered with PBS, Higher Ground, and Show of Force to create materials that bring the eight-part, Emmy and Grammy nominated Soundbreaking series into K-12 classrooms. The standards-aligned lessons are tailored for students in social studies, language arts, geography, science, and general music classes, and feature rich educational resources, including the interactive Soundbreaking TechTools that allow students to experience firsthand the technological breakthroughs explored on screen.
Partnership Lessons: Little Kids Rock
The Rock and Roll Forever Foundation has partnered with Little Kids Rock to present a series of interdisciplinary lessons. Little Kids Rock is a national nonprofit that trains public school teachers to deliver Modern Band music classes and provides instruments to the schools at no cost. This innovative series of lessons contextualizes specific songs from the Little Kids Rock songbook. Learning to play a song on guitar, on piano, on drums, or on any other instrument is an experience like no other. It’s powerful. But, by approaching music through a social and historical lens, learning to play a song can...